Unprecedented Combination of Rare Degenerative Pathologies in an Octogenarian Ex‐Football Player
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A 79-year-old former professional football player presented with language deficits and cognitive changes. A year later, he had difficulty completing sentences, and 3 years after onset, was reduced to one-word answers. He developed severe apathy and agitation, and became more impulsive. He eventually became mute and had difficulty with walking and balance. The patient had mild repetitive head injury while playing football and three concussions. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed left > right frontotemporal atrophy. Duration of illness was 6 years. Neuropathology revealed an unexpected number and diversity of degenerative pathologies, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE, high level), high level Alzheimer's disease neuropathologic change (A3B3C3), limbic Lewy body disease, cerebral amyloid angiopathy (type 2), argyrophilic grain disease (Stage 2), and neuronal intranuclear hyaline inclusion body disease. In addition, there was selective and asymmetric involvement of the corticospinal tract with globular oligodendroglial tau pathology corresponding to globular glial tauopathy (Type II). The patchy and irregular accentuation of cortical tau pathology, particularly in the depths of sulci and accumulation around blood vessels, allows the diagnosis of CTE-neuropathologic change. This diagnosis correlated with the past medical history of multiple concussions. In addition, the patient had an unprecedented number and combination of additional degenerative pathologies, including those that are rare, and how they contributed to the clinical symptoms is difficult to interpret. Globular glial tauopathy Type II is a rare disorder that has been mostly reported in association with progressive supranuclear gaze palsy, and these observations support the notion that globular glial tauopathy Type II is an independent entity with isolated corticospinal tract involvement. These observations highlight that rare disorders can occur in the same individual and be overlooked, especially when there is more obvious pathology. It is essential for neuropathologists to consider an extensive array of neuropathological examinations when assessing patients with neurodegenerative disorders.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".