Several Pitt brain scientists are featured in a new book, Concussion, by author Jeanne Marie Laskas. Penguin Random House timed the book to be on store shelves during the weeks before the Christmas Day release of the Ridley Scott movie of the same name.
Concussion (both the book and the film) is a medical thriller about a Pitt-trained forensic pathologist who discovered fibrillary tangles in the brains of relatively young former football players and then linked these abnormalities to repeated blows to the head. Bennet Omalu, MD, first examined the brain of “Iron Mike” Webster, the Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who died at age 50 after a steep mental decline. Toward the end of his life, Webster lived in a van and was fixing his rotting teeth with Super Glue.
Laskas, director of Pitt’s Writing Program and the author of seven books, relates how Omalu’s scientific quest eventually drew in Pitt clinician-scientists including: Ronald Hamilton, MD, associate professor of pathology; Steven DeKosky, MD, then neurology department chair, and now Rene Aerts/ Virginia J. Cosper Professor of Alzheimer’s Research at the University of Florida; Clayton Wiley, MD, PhD, professor of pathology and PERF Endowed Chair; and Joseph Maroon, MD, vice chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery and team neurosurgeon for the Steelers. Hamilton and DeKosky were joined by two Pitt genetic epidemiologists, Ryan Minster, PhD, and Ilyas Kamboh, PhD, as authors on Omalu’s controversial paper in the July 2005 issue of the journal Neurosurgery, “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football League Player.”
Jonette Werley, a long-time technician in Hamilton’s lab, processed the brain slices that resulted in Omalu’s discovery. Micky Collins, PhD, director of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program, who is highly cited for his concussion research, gets a mention. Others with Pitt connections include neurosurgeon Julian Bailes, MD, a leading protagonist in the tale. Bailes trained with Maroon at Pitt, worked for more than a decade as a team doctor for the Steelers, and is now co-director of the NorthShore Neurological Institute in Chicago.
In one early passage, Laskas relates how Omalu showed his early findings to Hamilton, a mentor during his neuropathology fellowship in 2000-2002:
“You’re not going to tell me what I’m looking at?” Hamilton said.
“No. Like the old days. See what you come up with.”
This was a sport for neuropathologists. A guessing game. Can you look at the pathology and guess what the patient was suffering from?
Hamilton flipped through the first two slides, then dropped his shoulder in boredom. “You’re bringing me an Alzheimer’s case? You do realize I spend my day with these—“
“No, keep looking,” Bennet said. And so Hamilton took his time. One slide after another, while Bennet twirled in the chair like a kid on the playground. He needed Hamilton’s read on this. Hamilton was the expert. He’d made a significant discovery about abnormal masses of proteins in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients during his decades-long career looking in microscopes.
“Huh,” Hamilton said, having finally figured the puzzle out. “So how did you end up with a boxer down in the morgue?”
“It’s not a boxer,” Bennett said…
Hamilton returned to the slides. “Where else do you get tau tangles like this?”
“It’s a football player,” Bennet said. “Mike Webster.”
In the film, Smith portrays Omalu, who is now chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County, California and a professor in the UC Davis Department of Medical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Both motion picture and book are based on Laskas’ 2009 GQ article “Game Brain.”