Born and bred in the U.S. of A., American Football is widely considered the country’s favorite sport. The first American football game — played in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton — has evolved over the past 155 years into a revenue powerhouse. Today, the National Football League (NFL) earns billions annually, with additional billions wagered through licensed sportsbooks, online platforms, and the ever-popular office pool.
But the spectators’ pleasure exacts a heavy toll on the players. Broken bones, pulled muscles, dislocated shoulders are par for the course. It’s so unfair that one of the most insidious injuries of all can only be diagnosed after death — CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a degenerative brain disease.
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A new study published in JAMA Neurology, according to Becky Sullivan of NPR, “represents one of the broadest surveys to date of former NFL players’ perception of their cognitive health and how widely they report symptoms linked to CTE, which is thought to be caused by concussions and repeated hits to the head.”
Sullivan shared a summary of the report: “Of the 1,980 respondents, 681 said they believed they had CTE. More than 230 former players said they had experienced suicidal thoughts, and 176 reported a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or other form of dementia.”
Awareness of the disease has grown over the last quarter-century. “Iron Mike” Webster, a former Pittsburgh Steeler, died in 2002 at the age of 50 of a heart attack — his gridiron glory days were long past. As the NFL website puts it, “Webster’s life would enter into a downward spiral as he lost his memory, got divorced, stopped eating, and was even sleeping in his car.”
The search for an answer to what had destroyed Webster’s life — something that was happening to many other former football players — was found during Webster’s autopsy. Red and brown dots were scattered throughout Iron Mike’s brain: tau proteins that destroy brain cells and lead to “changes in mood, depression, aggression, irritability, impulsivity, and anxiety.”
The 2015 film Concussion — with an exemplary performance by Will Smith that did not yield an Oscar nom — told the true story of Dr. Bennet Omalu’s groundbreaking research into Webster’s case and Omalu’s discoveries about CTE. The film brought significant attention to head injuries in football and about the long-term health risks associated with repeated concussions and head trauma.
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As more and more deaths occurred, this sparked much-needed conversations about player safety, concussion protocols, as the NFL’s handling of brain injuries. Such well-known footballers as Aaron Hernandez and Andre Waters suffered from CTE and committed suicide.
Researchers are looking for a way to test for the disease in living. That has yet to happen, but criteria for Traumatic Encephalopathy Syndrome (TES) was established by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke:
“(1) substantial exposure to repetitive head impacts (RHIs) from contact sports, military service, or other causes; (2) core clinical features of cognitive impairment (in episodic memory and/or executive functioning) and/or neurobehavioral dysregulation; (3) a progressive course; and (4) that the clinical features are not fully accounted for by any other neurologic, psychiatric, or medical conditions.”
As is the case with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, there’s no cure for CTE. That doesn’t mean one isn’t being sought. Boston University’s CTE Research Center is studying the disease from clinical, pathological, and molecular viewpoints, all in hopes of understanding — and treating — this insidious disease.
