A newly published study on former NFL players’ brains has found that nearly a quarter, at minimum, who died over a recent six-year period had a progressive degenerative brain disease that’s caused by repeated blows to the head and traumatic brain injuries.
That’s a much higher rate than is seen in the general population, the study released last week showed.
What is CTE?
As CBS News reports, CTE is a brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head. Former NFL stars like Junior Seau, Demaryius Thomas and Mike Webster were all found to have the disease, which can only be definitively diagnosed after someone dies by examining their brain tissue. The disease isn’t exclusive to football. MLS player Scott Vermillion was also diagnosed with it following his death. NHL players, like Hall of Famer Bobby Hull, were also diagnosed with the disease.
As the Huff Post reports, the study on CTE that was done by Mass General Brigham, Boston University, and the Concussion & CTE Foundation, published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal (BMJ), concluded that NFL players have a “higher prevalence of CTE at death than has been previously shown in multiple community-based studies.” The study also stated, “Furthermore, these data indicate that CTE severity at death is significantly associated with dementia in NFL player brain donors, and that dementia is common in these donors.”
The Study Covered a Five-Year Period
This conclusion follows researchers examining 235 brains of 878 former players who died from 2016 to 2021. Of those brains, made available through donation, 215 or 91% were diagnosed with CTE, which can only be definitively diagnosed after death. This equated to a minimum prevalence of 24.5% of CTE at death for all decedents.
An NFL spokesperson told CBS News the league “continuously strives to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts.” The spokesperson continued, “The NFL remains committed to ensuring that the NFL community has access to a robust — and expanding — set of resources to enhance their physical and mental wellbeing. We encourage former players to utilize these resources to identify and seek treatment when they are concerned about their health.”
A Call for More Research
“Community brain bank studies have shown that CTE affects less than 1% of the general population. To find that somewhere between 24.5% and 97.7% of NFL players from that time period had this progressive brain disease is a wake-up call for the NFL and scientific communities,” said Daniel Daneshvar, the study’s lead author, the chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Mass General Brigham and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Randy Grimes, 66, who played center for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1983 to 1992 and runs a nonprofit that counsels retired athletes, said more attention is needed.”It’s not something that’s brought up, it’s not something that players want to talk about,” he told The New York Times. “We probably could move forward faster in our research if we did talk more about it. But players don’t want to do it. They don’t want to think they have it, they don’t want to think they’re seeing it. Deep down, we all know that probably the majority of us are going to have some form of C.T.E.”
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