Brain disease seen in most football players in large report

Research conducted on some 200 former American football players has found evidence of a brain disease linked to repeated head blows in nearly all of them, including professionals all the way down the ranks to high-school players.

BrainScope employee Doug Oberly wears a brain scanning headset at the NFL owners' meeting in Boca Raton, Fla., Tuesday, March 22, 2016. The headset and mobile app can quickly and easily allow clinicians to determine whether patients have sustained a traumatic brain injury, the company says. [File photo: AP]

It's one of the most popular sports in the United States, but the level of impact on the players who play American Football is starting to become more and more clear.

Research into the brains of former footballers shows many have evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

Many donors to the brain bank in Boston, or their families, asked for the studies due to problems their repeated concussions created for them later in life.

A number of those who contributed to the study took their own lives.

Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neuroscientist, is the lead author of the new research paper.

"The only requirement for inclusion in this study was exposure to football. Now, a brain bank donation study is skewed, it has an ascertainment bias, but even considering that the fact that we were able to accumulate 177 cases of CTE in a relatively short time frame speaks volumes," McKee said.

This Sunday, Dec. 5, 1999 file photo shows Tennessee Titans tight end Frank Wycheck during a football game against the Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore. Wycheck worries that concussions during his nine-year career have left him with chronic traumatic encephalopathy and he plans to donate his brain to research. “Some people have heads made of concrete, and it doesn't really affect some of those guys,” he said. “But CTE is real.” [File photo: AP]

"It says that this disease is not rare, in fact, 80 some percent of the brains came in because of family members concerned about their loved ones, that says this disease is out there, this is a problem in football and this is something we need to address as soon as possible."

Many scientists believe that repeated blows to the head increase risks for developing CTE, leading to progressive loss of normal brain matter and an abnormal build-up of a protein called tau.

Combat veterans and athletes in rough contact sports are among those thought to be most at risk.

Of the 111 brains of former NFL players, 110 showed signs of the disease.

Doctor Ann McKee says brain bank research may lead to answers, as well as a better way to detect the problems while a person is alive, so that treatment options could be possible.

"Our whole goal is to increase the understanding of this disease, increase the awareness, hopefully to figure out ways to prevent this disease entirely, but importantly also to figure out ways to detect this disease during life and treat it," McKee added. 

"We know that there are football players out there that are concerned that they have CTE. There are very likely many that have CTE and we need to bring some hope and optimism to those players and it's not going to be by arguing about whether or not this disease exists. It's going to be about coming together as a collective society and really addressing this issue."

Former NFL running back and national sportscaster Mike Adamle recently announced that he is suffering from dementia, and says tests suggests he's likely suffering from the effects of CTE as well.

In this 1974 file photo, Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler looks to pass. According to a report released on Tuesday, July 25, 2017 by the Journal of the American Medical Association, research on 202 former football players found evidence of a brain disease linked to repeated head blows in nearly all of them, from athletes in the National Football League, college and even high school. Stabler is among the cases previously reported. [File photo: AP]

"I think a lot of players looked at themselves as rock stars, or performers is a better word. You gave, you put all your energy into yourself because those people paid money and they were there to watch you play. And I think we all thought that we owed them something," Adamle noted.

In the report, McKee and colleagues found the most severe cases of CTE in former NFL and other professional players.

Milder forms of CTE were discovered in three former high school players diagnosed with the disease.

The average age of death among all players studied was 66.

Among the 177 diagnosed with CTE, 10 percent were suicides.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, first coined by a US coroner, is microfissures in the interior of the brain, thought to be caused by continual blows to the head.

Currently there are no precise ways to test for CTE, meaning studies right now have to focus on a person's brain after they die, limiting doctor's abilities to research ways to try to limit or fix the problem in living patients.