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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-your-head-whacked-is-bad-for-you dept.

Ninety-nine percent of ailing NFL player brains sport hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease, autopsy study finds

The largest study of its kind has found damage in the vast majority of former football players' brains donated for research after they developed mental symptoms during life. Of 202 former players of the U.S. version of the game whose brains were examined, 87% showed the diagnostic signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease associated with repetitive head trauma. Among former National Football League (NFL) players in the sample, that number jumped to 99%. The findings will likely ratchet up the pressure on leaders at all levels of football to protect their players. Still, the authors and other experts caution against overinterpreting the results, because the brains all came from symptomatic former players and not from those who remained free of mental problems.

"I think it is increasingly difficult to deny a link between CTE and repeated traumatic brain injury, be it through contact sports or other mechanisms," says Gil Rabinovici, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), who was not affiliated with the study.

The researchers, led by Boston University (BU) neuropathologist Ann McKee, used brains from a bank maintained by the VA Boston Healthcare System, BU, and the Concussion Legacy Foundation. They were donated by families of former football players. The team defines CTE, a diagnosis made only at autopsy, as "progressive degeneration associated with repetitive head trauma." The designation remains controversial with some, who call it a muddy diagnosis that doesn't include an iron-clad clinical course and the kind of clear-cut pathology that defines classical neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease.

Clinicopathological Evaluation of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Players of American Football (open, DOI: 10.1001/jama.2017.8334) (DX)


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:17PM (7 children)

    by looorg (578) on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:17PM (#544643)

    If one has ever seen NFL football it's usually not a lot of running and movement but a constant of short burst action plays as the players collide with each other and the ball at best moves a few yards forward. These results should hardly come as a surprise for they are playing a game where monster-sized people are slamming into each other over and over again. Their brains are, probably, bouncing around inside the skull as if getting hit by a pro-boxer over and over and over again. The average male in America is around 5'9" and 190 lb and from the link below we can see in the chart the average height and weight of pro-athletes. There is a big difference between normal and pro-athlete, men on the defence line are around 6'3" (up to almost 6'6") and around 310 lb at less then 30 years old. Those are the average, you have some real beasts on the defence weighing up towards 350lb. Not sure about the actual force they are hitting each other at or with but it's not going to be gentle and that protection they got probably doesn't do much for the brain bouncing around between the inner confines of the skull. So the same type of damage we see in pro-boxers of similar sizes, dementia pugilistica, shouldn't be all that surprising.

    (similar data in these two, slightly different colored graphs, the last one also includes average man)
    http://www.businessinsider.com/average-height-weight-nfl-nba-players-2014-8 [businessinsider.com]
    http://www.psychguides.com/interact/male-body-image-and-the-average-athlete/ [psychguides.com]

    (study of how the size and weight of pro-football players change between 1942 and 2011, there is a significant increase)
    http://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2013/02000/Changes_in_Height,_Body_Weight,_and_Body.1.aspx [lww.com]

    http://www.thesportster.com/football/top-15-heaviest-players-in-nfl-history/ [thesportster.com]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:31PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:31PM (#544676)

    Oh man how much it sucks to be of average proportions for 1960s today :( I guess I should have binged on the hormone infested milk growing up.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:38PM (3 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:38PM (#544723) Journal

    Not only football. Boxing is also a risk sports in this area. Muhammad Ali is one example.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:55PM (#544738)

      At least back in the day Cassius "Muhammad Ali" Clay had the brains and balls to say NO to Vietnam war. Incredibly he also prevailed.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_v._United_States [wikipedia.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @09:52PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @09:52PM (#544881)

        At least he that thing called fame and money which allowed him to skate by the draft process. The rest of the nobodies got shipped off to hell.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:33PM (#544753)

      Not only boxing, but also American football!

  • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:42PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:42PM (#544787)

    Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.

    I forget who said that. Google says it was George Will, but doesn't supply the context.