At least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 was found to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), according to a study released on Tuesday. Out of the 878 former players who died during that time frame, 235 donated their brains for study, researchers said, with 215 of those donated brains found to have CTE, a degenerative disease that can only definitively be diagnosed after death. CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, including concussions.
Symptoms include difficulty with attention and memory, dementia, mood disorders and headaches. An NFL spokesperson said: “The NFL continuously strives to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts. The study from Mass General Brigham, Boston University, and the Concussion + CTE Foundation also found dementia was common among brain donors, with researchers urging prevention measures that focus on cutting down on repetitive head impacts across all levels of the sport.
They occurred at the collegiate level ... and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level. And all of those cumulative hits to the head added up to result in an increased risk,” said Daneshvar. A number of high-profile NFL players who took their own lives – including Junior Seau, Dave Duerson and Aaron Hernandez – were found to have had CTE when their brains were analyzed after their deaths.
The NFL’s 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement limited the number of contact practices during the season. The Ivy League banned full-contact tackling during practices five years later. The US Supreme Court cleared the way for the NFL’s settlement of concussion-related lawsuits with thousands of retired players in 2016.
So without changing a single minute of game time at any of those levels, we can be substantially reducing the cumulative head impact burden that these individuals are experiencing throughout their lives.”
Extract — continue reading at the source.
