Before his death, he asked his wife to donate his brain to CTE research because it was noticed that Probert experienced a mental decline in his 40s. In March 2011, researchers at Boston University concluded that Probert had CTE upon analysis of the brain tissue he donated. He was the second NHL player from the program at the BU CTE Center to be diagnosed with CTE postmortem.The BU CTE Center has also found indications of links between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and CTE in athletes who have participated in contact sports. Tissue for the study was donated by twelve athletes and their families to the VA-BU-CLF Brain Bank at the Bedford, Massachusetts VA Medical Center.In 2013, President Barack Obama announced the creation of the Chronic Effects of Neurotrauma Consortium or CENC, a federally funded research project devised to address the long-term effects of mild traumatic brain injury in military service personnel (SMs) and veterans. The CENC is a multi-center collaboration linking premiere basic science, translational, and clinical neuroscience researchers from the DoD, VA, academic universities, and private research institutes to effectively address the scientific, diagnostic, and therapeutic ramifications of mild TBI and its long-term effects.Nearly 20% of the more than 2.5 million U.S. service members (SMs) deployed since 2003 to Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) have sustained at least one traumatic brain injury (TBI), predominantly mild TBI (mTBI), and almost 8% of all OEF/OIF Veterans demonstrate persistent post-TBI symptoms more than six months post-injury.
Bleeding is more frequent and severe in women of child-bearing age; these women may suffer miscarriages, menometrorrhagia, and excessive bleeding during child birth and/or the postpartum period. Excessive bleeding following major or minor surgery, including dental extractions, occurs in both females and males with the disorder. Thrombotic complications of the disorder are often (~50%) recurrent and can involve central and peripheral arteries, deep and superficial veins. Thrombotic events may be serious and involve occlusion of a cerebral artery leading to stroke, splanchnic venous thrombosis, and pulmonary thrombosis presumptively secondary to deep vein thrombosis. Fibrinogen
Circulating fibrinogen is a glycoprotein made of two trimers each of which is composed of three polypeptide chains, Aα (also termed α) encoded by the FGA gene, Bβ (also termed β) encoded by the FGB gene, and γ encoded by the FGG gene. All three genes are located on the long or "q" arm of human chromosome 4 (at positions 4q31.3, 4q31.3, and 4q32.1, respectively) and are the sites where mutations occur that code for a dysfunctional fibrinogen and/or reduced fibrinogen levels which are the cause of congenital hypodysfibrinogenemia. Pathophysiology
Congenital hypodysfibrinogenemia is inherited as an autosomal dominant disorder caused by at least 32 different types of single mutations. Ten of these mutations are in the fibrinogen alpha chain gene (also termed the FGA gene), 5 in the fibrinogen beta chain gene (also termed the FGB gene), and 17 in the fibrinogen gamma chain gene (also termed the FGG gen).