from the getting-your-head-whacked-is-bad-for-you dept.
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)
Related Stories
Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who committed suicide a week after being acquitted of double homicide, has been found to have had severe signs (original AP text) of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Hernandez's brain had been released to Boston University by his family for study. In 2015, Hernandez was found guilty for the murder of Odin Lloyd and automatically sentenced to life in prison without a possibility of parole:
Tests conducted on the brain of former football star Aaron Hernandez showed severe signs of the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and his attorney said Thursday that the player's daughter is suing the NFL and the New England Patriots for leading Hernandez to believe the sport was safe.
In a news conference at his offices, Hernandez's attorney, Jose Baez, said the testing showed one of the most severe cases ever diagnosed. "We're told it was the most severe case they had ever seen for someone of Aaron's age," Baez said. Hernandez was 27 when he killed himself in April. Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the CTE Center at Boston University, concluded that the New England Patriots tight end had stage 3 of 4 of the disease and also had early brain atrophy and large perforations in a central membrane.
[...] A week before his suicide, Hernandez was acquitted in the 2012 drive-by shootings of two men in Boston. Prosecutors had argued that Hernandez gunned the two men down after one accidentally spilled a drink on him in a nightclub, and then got a tattoo of a handgun and the words "God Forgives" to commemorate the crime.
Baez said he deeply regretted not raising the issue of Hernandez's having CTE during his murder trials. He said the defense team did not blame CTE for the murders because Hernandez's defense was actual innocence.
Previously: NFL Acknowledges Link Between American Football and CTE
What if PTSD is More Physical Than Psychological?
Ailing NFL Players' Brains Show Signs of Neurodegenerative Disease
Aaron Hernandez's brain shows signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) with a severity beyond anything experts have ever seen in an athlete his age:
The Boston researcher who examined the brain of former football star Aaron Hernandez says it showed the most damage her team had seen in an athlete so young.
Hernandez, whose on-field performance for the New England Patriots earned him a $40 million contract in 2012, hanged himself in a prison cell earlier this year while serving a life sentence for murder. He was 27 years old.
Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist who directs research of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, at Boston University, said her research team found Hernandez had Stage 3 CTE and that they had never seen such severe damage in a brain younger than 46 years old. McKee announced her findings at medical conference on Thursday in Boston where she spoke publicly for the first time.
The researchers described the brain as one of the most significant contributions to their work due to the former athlete's young age at the time of his death. Also at the Boston Herald.
In other news, a lawsuit by the estate of Aaron Hernandez (filed while Hernandez was alive) against a prison phone service has been thrown out:
The identity of a hacker who accessed jailhouse conversations between Aaron Hernandez and his fiancee while he was awaiting trial will likely never be revealed now that a judge has spiked the former Patriot's lawsuit against the phone service hired to record and store non-privileged calls.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Helene Kazanjian entered her judgment Monday allowing Texas-based Securus Technologies Inc.'s motions to dismiss Hernandez's complaint. It was initially filed in federal court last year, five months before Hernandez hanged himself in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley. Hernandez's estate was pushing forward with the civil action.
Did American football create a murderer and drive him to suicide?
Previously: NFL Acknowledges Link Between American Football and CTE
Ailing NFL Players' Brains Show Signs of Neurodegenerative Disease
Former Football Star Aaron Hernandez's Brain Found to Have Severe CTE
Abnormal Levels of a Protein Linked to C.T.E.[*] Found in N.F.L Players' Brains, Study Shows
Experimental brain scans of more than two dozen former N.F.L. players found that the men had abnormal levels of the protein linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head.
Using positron emission tomography, or PET, scans, the researchers found "elevated amounts of abnormal tau protein" in the parts of the brain associated with the disease, known as C.T.E., compared to men of similar age who had not played football.
The authors of the study and outside experts stressed that such tau imaging is far from a diagnostic test for C.T.E., which is likely years away and could include other markers, from blood and spinal fluid.
The results of the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday [DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1900757] [DX], are considered preliminary, but constitute a first step toward developing a clinical test to determine the presence of C.T.E. in living players, as well as early signs and potential risk.
[*] CTE: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
Also at NBC.
Editorial: Links in the Chain of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1903746) (DX)
Related: NFL Acknowledges Link Between American Football and CTE
What if PTSD is More Physical Than Psychological?
Ailing NFL Players' Brains Show Signs of Neurodegenerative Disease
Former Football Star Aaron Hernandez's Brain Found to Have Severe CTE
Researchers: Aaron Hernandez Had the Worst Case of CTE Ever Seen in an Athlete So Young
CTE Can be Diagnosed in a Living Person
(Score: 5, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:51PM (2 children)
The next project should be to analyze the brains of people that just want to become football players to find out if the damage was already there or was causative.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:32PM
Take a look at Paul Grahams High School [paulgraham.com] document. The lines between cause and effect seems quite blurred as you imply ;)
And about girls:
"known to have read books" - Interesting place of learning. Or perhaps the place was about something else.. like storage, conformity and obedience.
Sports..
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 26 2017, @07:54PM
Military would be interesting. Specifically combat vets vs REMF guys. I guess the whippersnappers on my lawn these days call them pogs or pogues or some damn thing, but when I was in they were REMFs. The background and training will be very similar across infantry or arty or support REMFs BUT its well documented (more or less) which were hit by IEDs or in combat.
The closest analogy I can think of for football is the QB or place kicker probably don't get tackled 1/100th as much as defensive center.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:54PM (6 children)
I suspect the NFL (and the NHL) is on the way out. Thank god we didn't give dinky dick Spanos a billion bux to build a new stadium. Let the LA taxpayers be on the hook for that.
Oh wait, dipshit dick is gonna be playing in the basement of some billionaire from Saint Louis. Good riddance.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:09PM
From Mars, Ho! [mcgrewbooks.com]:
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:10PM
> I suspect the NFL (and the NHL) is on the way out.
The leagues will have another toast of caviar and a cup of Dom Perignom served between the boobs of a top model while they evaluate whether your opinion is a threat to future revenue.
After careful consideration (sniffing coke from the model's bellybutton while watching high-schoolers be tough to impress girls and coaches), and thorough review (blowjob in the College game skybox, with a side of foie gras on Kobe beef), the answer sounded like laughter, though it was hard to figure out over the concerto of exotic cars parking near the Gulfstream.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 26 2017, @07:57PM (3 children)
Possibly. Looking at demographics, whites don't watch soccer and hispanics don't watch football, so WRT intentional demographic replacement, some states are likely to drop the whole football thing in place of soccer. I don't really know why CA or FL have football teams right now. On the other hand owning a soccer team in CA or FL or NM would probably be a good purchase.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/289952/distribution-of-nfl-regular-season-tv-audience-by-race-or-ethnicity/ [statista.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:18PM (1 child)
Professional soccer players have also been found to have high levels of CTE (presumably from using their head to deflect the ball).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:20PM
Good point AC, I always thought using head in soccer was pretty idiotic self destructive, and a simple rule change would allow a bit more arm use to deflect without damaging the game much, while another rule change that using head means kicked out of the game until medical professionals perform a concussion or head injury analysis would fix a lot of this self destructive behavior.
Sports can sometimes be very self destructive, but its not necessary. Competitive fisherman aren't required to drink a pint of gasoline every time they catch a fish. Competitive coders aren't required to take a sledgehammer to the skull for the hell of it as they implement algos. Race car drivers aren't forced to drink engine coolant every time they race.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:35PM
Doubtful. When we have a soccer game in San Diego they have a good turnout, but a large percentage is from south of the border. We have soccer games maybe twice a year. If we have games weekly, or more often, how many people are going to be willing to wait for hours to cross the border to watch the game?
I think SoccerCity stinks to high heaven, from the initial assumptions on attendance, to the sneaky dealings between our illustrious mayor and the backers of SoccerCity.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:17PM (7 children)
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]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:31PM (1 child)
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: 1) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:49PM
I know a guy in Miami who does boob jobs for only $2499. Very affordable!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:38PM (3 children)
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)
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
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
Not only boxing, but also American football!
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:42PM
I forget who said that. Google says it was George Will, but doesn't supply the context.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:09PM
It's important not to over interpret these results. After all, the field goal kicker from special teams only showed neuropathy in his foot, ankle, and lower leg!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:25PM (2 children)
Source: ArsTechnica [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:23PM
True, but it does indicate that more study is badly needed,
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @09:40PM
So the bodies of former base jumpers who were showing signs of head fractures while alive are found to indeed show signs of head fractures when examined posthumously.
But yeah. I'm not convinced the likelihood was demonstrated. What we need is a controlled study where 1000 volunteers will be split to a test and control group. One group would be tossed off the roof while the other doesn't. Then, we'll kill them all - or anyone left alive that is - and perform an autopsy.
It's the only way to make sure.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:30PM (6 children)
It shouldn't take lots of scientific study to figure out that getting hit in the head repeatedly is not good for your brain.
However, there are a lot of idiots out there who love watching other people get hurt. The main driver of the NFL is the same as what would make a show like "Ow My Balls!" popular.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:39PM
I don't understand what is the big fucking deal here. These people made lot of money for no-talent talent (ME SMASH is hardly something worthy of praise. A stone-age buffoon could do similar). And if they didn't, then they are morons for destroying their bodies (and poultry minds) for no money (like say "semi-professional" "wrestlers").
Also there is large argument being made that these people had no use for their brains to begin with. I guess we can just go back to less gear and test everyone for painkillers and people will stop running into each-other at full speed because it will hurt, but at the end of the day the people doing things to their bodies have to own up to the consequence of their choice....
Who am I kidding, we print "CAUTION: HOT" on cups of coffee in this country, I'm sure they will end up with millions more because someone didn't put "CAUTION: HEAD HURT! NO GOOD!" on the Football helmets.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:14PM (4 children)
This is a popular claim, I'm not disagreeing with that, but I don't believe its true. Nobody seems to freaked out that extensive safety regulations in car racing make the sport boring or unwatchable, merely because its become unusual over the decades for race car drivers to die. In fact I think its been a long time since the majority of young race car driver deaths happen on the track, almost all dead race car drivers died off the track for some decades now.
I can imagine football being just as exciting with some mods.
Touch football rules for passing plays are an interesting idea. The league has arguably historically had eras of being overboard WRT pass interference calls, so not beating the shit out of the receiver after a catch shouldn't be much harder than not beating up the receiver before a catch.
One simple rule that's actually pretty interesting to contemplate is allowing zero yardage after a catch, you catch it on the 25 yard line next down is at the 25 yard line, no BS about 150 pound wide receivers trying to run after a catch and getting hit by 350 pound defensive backs and ending up in the ER or dead.
For rushing its interesting to consider the damage comes from running and building up speed. So in theory more defensive backs and corresponding shorter downs means less speed to build up means less collision damage. What if the offensive line and defensive line literally started plays in contact rather than a yard's impact building up? Arm wrestling some big dumb bastard would result in ligament and muscle damage but arm wrestling doesn't result in concussions as often as tackling.
Another rather interesting "race car analogy" is if football players die when team players get over 300 pounds average of muscle, well, it seems obvious to have a weigh in and the team can field no more than wxyz pounds on any given play. And other rules, like every pound of safety gear they wear gives them two extra pounds of human flesh on the field, maybe.
We have the electronics tech for fencing to see where fencers are hit with blades, and presumably there are protectable body parts that can take a hit better than others. It should be trivial electronically to make a players helmet touch sensitive...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 26 2017, @09:06PM (3 children)
Deaths due to on-field injury in football are relatively rare at the professional level: 1 arena football player died in 2005, and in the NFL only 3 players have died, the most recent being in 1971. 1 or 2 players are killed in either on-field injuries or much more commonly during practice at the collegiate level every year. 10-15 high school players die each year due to football injuries.
Since the lower-level players are smaller, it's not clear to me that lower weight limits would solve the problem. Sure, getting hit by a 320 lb player is going to hurt more than getting hit by a 200 lb player, but if you don't do a good job of protecting your head and neck the 200 lb person is more than capable of dealing a lethal blow if they hit at the wrong angle.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:11PM (2 children)
Good points, I agree with and extend my remarks to my proposal only makes sense if (as I suspect) the rate of injury is highly non-linear with player mass and has recently become more of an issue because of extensive steroid and other enhancement use.
He's significantly before my time, but Ray Nitschke achieved the hall of fame and only weighed about 230 pounds in a pre-steroid era. It seems like all -backs in this "enhanced" era exceed 250 pounds. Assuming its purely linear (I suspect its not...) that decrease alone should reduce impact damage by about 10%. Note that we're not comparing apples to oranges, a league dominating player of the early 60s is obviously bigger and stronger than his peers compared to a no-name 10s decade recruit, so the ratio "should be" larger plus I believe its non-linear anyway. Would not be surprised if mere mass could influence 25% or more of measured damage.
Another interesting idea, the focus is always on the televised field but maybe training is hurting the players. Pro summer camp is (or was) legendarily useless at doing nothing for performance, generating some TV coverage, and hurting a bunch of guys.
Football needs more discussion like this anyway, right or wrong. I used to be really into it in the 90s, its a pretty interesting balance of tactics strategy and logistics and has all kinds of analogies to combined arms warfare and its just interesting. However the puddle is extremely shallow and the marketing of the product is mostly for drunks to drink more beer, it could be a sport where above room temperature IQ discussions are possible, but currently isn't.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 27 2017, @04:04PM (1 child)
The thing is, that there are plenty of other sports with interesting tactics and logistics and strategy that don't involve giving opponents concussions on a regular basis. For example, ultimate [usaultimate.org], while being a cheap and simple game to play casually, also has deep strategy and intense athleticism (playing often involves running full-tilt and trying to out-jump opponents), and is much safer than football.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:07PM
I know a guy who plays that, aside, apparently, from you. The problem with "basketball-football-frisbee" is like basketball its a single note of a passing game so it doesn't have the tactical depth of football's passing and running game, and there's no emotional build up to plays its an aerobic grind game like soccer or to a lesser extent basketball.
If you took the cool parts of football and embedded into the game, you'd have touch football with a disc instead of a football, so I'm not seeing that. Or if you went for the height athleticism of basketball you'd have, well, basketball, with a disc thru a basket instead of a basketball thru a basket. What makes this game specifically a flying disk game and not a variant of polo or rugby that trivially has a disk instead of a ball? Note there's nothing "wrong" with playing water polo with a disk on land, its just not a disk game. Its hard to fix, if the fixes result in something already inferior or broken.
Its like fusion cooking. Sometimes you get tex-mex which is pretty cool. Sometimes you get Thai-Scottish and I'm not eating that haggis.
I'm trying to think up some game rules that rely on the unique physics of a flying disk. Hmm... passer can't throw until the receivers stop running? A running game where you can carry the disk as far as you want until you're touched by an opponent? With modern tech and "infinite" pro money the field need not emulate a suburban park, you could make the field the size of a golf course. Being a throwable disk it should be "easy" for the goal to be a target some distance from the in-bounds field, that's an interesting idea.
Note that games like dodgeball are fun to play but pro-sport TV coverage is unimaginable bad. Its possible American Football is the reverse, its an interesting slow way to die without any fun at all, but at least the TV coverage is impressive. That is an interesting aspect to consider when re-engineering a game. Its not necessarily a tradeoff all the time, but often enough seems to be.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:49PM (5 children)
?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy [wikipedia.org]
This looks like people thinking they understand something because they came up with a sciency word for it, then not even understanding their own definition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:26PM (4 children)
From the article you linked:
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:37PM (3 children)
Not sure what your point is. If it wasn't clear, my point was that *by definition* CTE is linked to repeated brain injuries so it is wrong to deny any link between the two and pointless to point out there is a link.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:13PM
By definition, the common cold is caused by exposure to coldness. We now know it's caused by a variety of viruses [cdc.gov], but the name has stuck. Dr. Rabinovici seems to be saying that the supposition embodied in the name CTE is correct. If the condition somehow turned out to have another cause, the condition would still exist but the name would be shown to be wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:23PM (1 child)
Context and magnitude matters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @10:45PM
No, this is the entire quote in TFS:
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:28PM
I hear they want to do studies on what the feck is going on in the mind of the Kardashians.
I'm guessing they find nothing..... inside their heads.
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---