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Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

200 points by CaliforniaKarl 9y ago

billmdsf 9y ago
When NFL players can be diagnosed while they're still playing, or even identify how much their Tau proteins increase after a big hit, that will have a big impact. It seems like it's still easy enough to not think about dying early when getting concussed.
outsideoflife 9y ago
For my American cousins I thought I would mention a little more about Rugby Union. Concussion is less of a problem in Rugby than in American football, and this is not an accident. Rugby is addressing this in several ways. 1) Years of rule changes, and stricter enforcement. Now a top level player who tackles someone above the shoulder, or tackles without attempting to hold on (so no clothes-linse or body checks) will be sent off (which in Rugby is catastrophic to your teams chances). If you lift a player off the ground you are responsible for putting them down again. Drop them on their head and expect a lengthy ban. This hasn't changed the spectacle of Rugby much, if anything the skill levels have improved. 2) Protection. Around your head Rugby only allows you to wear a small soft 'scrum cap' which protects from bruising and wounds from head clashes, like the things boxers suffer with around their eyes. Their is a light collar bone protector which seems to be about 1/5th of the thickness of the equivalent Gridiron gear. That is all. The impacts are still impressive to see, indeed are perhaps more impressive on an un-armoured body, but with lower G-force to the head 3) The size of the people. In both sports their has been an increase in the mass of the players. However US football players seems disproportionately massive. In Rugby their are not rolling substitutions, so you have to carry that mass around for 80 minutes, and therefore a compromise is necessary, perhaps gridiron could restrict the number of subs, or the squad size so the bruisers actually had to run. The miracle of sports nutrition, with the characteristic protruding jaw bones, seem to be producing bigger players than they may if they had effective controls against doping. Yes I said it, from across the pond, it looks like steroid abuse is rife in several US sports. 4) The concussion protocol. Any player that appears to have been knocked out in Rugby gets sent from the pitch to be examined by a doctor for a minimum of 10 minutes. If concussion is detected there is a mandatory period off playing. If concussion recurs this can be months! Welsh International George North suffered repeated concussions and missed most of the following year. During this same period Rugby has become a tougher sport than ever, but without killing the brains of our young men
- Havoc 9y ago
  While the efforts made certainly help there is no getting around the fact that it is an impact sport. That combined with a culture of being tough means that few ‘good’ players escape completely injury free. Short of touch rugby there will still be head impacts and that will have an effect of varying degrees - just maybe not noticeable. Personally I find it difficult to understand how parents can let their kids play rugby when there is such overwhelming evidence that it’s risky at best.
  - yesthrowaway234 9y ago
    I've hurt myself far less playing rugby than soccer, and had way more fun too. Yes, it's a high impact sport, and that's exactly why there are a lot of rules to prevent anyone from getting seriously injured. Also, the objective of Rugby is to get the "ball" at the other side of the camp while avoiding the most friction possible, not to hurt each other. In fact, we were often encouraged to avoid contact whenever possible and to pass the ball whenever we could. There is also a lot of training on how to to fall and how to not hurt your opponents too, I wouldn't say it's "risky at best", quite the contrary, I'd recommend the sport to anyone young enough.
    - Havoc 9y ago
      >I've hurt myself far less playing rugby than soccer, Respectfully, self-assessment is exactly the wrong approach here. Play soccer, break a leg. Obvious - leg is broken. Play rugby, lose 5% mental ability - less obvious especially in a self(!)-assessment of one's mental ability. >Also, the objective of Rugby I've been on the receiving side of some nasty rugby tackles...including the type where I don't remember a lot about them. So yes I do understand the objective of Rugby and all that great stuff. >In fact, we were often encouraged to avoid contact whenever possible and to pass the ball whenever we could. If everyone plays a clean textbook version then that works out well. In my experience putting a bunch of determined testosterone fuelled guys on a field does not result in textbook clean though. Not even close. Rugby/Boxing/NFL/whatever...consider this. 99% of NFL post mortems show CTE. Not just a few - 99%. Lets suppose Rugby is way better like literally halves the risk despite both similar contact sports but lets pretend Rugby is way better. Can you really "recommend the sport to anyone young enough" at 49% CTE risk? Telling me about training how to fall is just not going to cut it. So yes "risky at best" is my assessment of the situation. http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/25/health/cte-nfl-players-brains-study/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/25/health/cte-nfl-players-bra...
isatty 9y ago
CTE - Chronic traumatic encephalopathy[0] for anyone else who was confused. The author uses it countless times without explaining what it is. More details - Currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed by direct tissue examination after death, including full and immunohistochemical brain analyses.[15] The lack of in vivo techniques to show distinct biomarkers for CTE is the reason CTE cannot currently be diagnosed while a person is alive...[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy#Diagnosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  The very first line of the story says what it is: Researchers have identified the degenerative brain disease known as CTE... It's a newspaper rather than a scientific journal so I think they can be forgiven for not expanding the acronym, just as newspapers commonly report heart attacks rather than myocardial infarctions.
  - acchow 9y ago
    For the vast majority of their readers "Chronic traumatic encephalopathy" is just as uninformative as "CTE".
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Well yes, that's the point of saying 'degenerative brain disease' instead.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    They do expand the acronym in the second paragraph: ... to identify chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the living.
nerglish 9y ago
common table expression?
- LearnerHerzog 9y ago
  Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...
wdewind 9y ago
I didn't grow up playing or really understanding sports. I was one of those guys who joked about "sportsball" and stuff like that. When I started really taking weight training seriously I started having a frame of reference for understanding sports and started really appreciating them. Football is a sport that is designed to really allow people to showcase the limits of the human body. The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL and when you think about the things that happen in any single game, they truly are spectacular. OBJ's "The Catch" is one of the most impressive things in the history of sports period. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818_M8gOnqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818_M8gOnqQ But the NFL is finding itself in a really tough position. I love this sport, but I find it ethically difficult to watch now. It would be one thing if the NFL was doing everything it could to protect its athletes, but it's absolutely clear they are trying to bury their heads in the sand on this one: > “We need a couple million of dollars. What is stopping us is the money. We’re ready to roll.” Think about this: we currently have no way to diagnose CTE in living people, we think we may have a way, the "we" in that is pretty credible as its the person who discovered CTE, and it will cost roughly $2mm, and the NFL isn't tripping over themselves to write the check for some reason. It would cost 12 seconds of superbowl ad revenue to fund this, and in fact the NFL has pledged $100mm to investigate CTE, but basically they just aren't doing it: http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20509977/nfl-takes-control-brain-research-100-million-donation-all-ending-partnerships-entities http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20509977/nfl-takes-c... This is kind of shameful, and as a fan of this sport I really hope they figure out how to have a better position on this issue, because what's going on right now is not sustainable.
- madebysquares 9y ago
  I have been wat hung football since i was kid but like you the past couple of years it has become harder to justify watching these big hits and traumatic injuries knowing the damage it is doing to players when they get older.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  OBJ's "The Catch" is one of the most impressive things in the history of sports period. Every sports record is hailed as the most impressive thing in sports ever. I think your enthusiasm for the sport might be leading you into a bit of hyperbole here.
madebysquares 9y ago
This would be a game changer and potentially life saving for hundreds of athletes in all contact sports but mostly American football. I they can find the funding they need to further their research.
- icelancer 9y ago
  The problem is that the NFL stifles and blocks as many methods as possible in this regard. Though I'll admit it's rapidly changing, and for the better.
- scientismist 9y ago
  The best way to start saving lives is to get people to stop playing these types of sports.
ulrikrasmussen 9y ago
Does the difficulty in diagnosis stem from the fact that it is hard to differentiate CTE from other degenerative brain diseases, or is it just hard to diagnose in the living altogether? I mean, is the presence of Alzheimer's-like symptoms a necessary but not sufficient condition? Being able to rule out the condition would be very valuable to former contact sport athletes worrying about the disease.
- tmh79 9y ago
  from what I understand, it is currently a chemical test that requires a biopsy or tissue sample, which is difficult to get from the brain because well, you remove part of the brain, which is bad.
  - ulrikrasmussen 9y ago
    Right, that is to diagnose CTE post-mortem. But does CTE also cause other phyiscal symptoms which are just indistinguishable from regular Alzheimer's? For instance, would a person with CTE also have visible plaques on an MRI, or is the disease really invisible in the living? The fact that they found CTE in 110 out of 111 NFL players post-mortem should indicate that they had a pretty good idea about which players to pick for autopsy. Was those picks based on their history of psychological issues alone, or were there other indicators such as definite signs of Alzheimer's?
    - ddorian43 9y ago
      Many brain disease don't show on MRI (schizophrenia, depression, bipolar etc).
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    brain biopsies are routinely performed for brain tumors so its not that uncommon.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      But that's to characterize a known lesion, which may require aggressive treatment depending upon its type, and will likely require excision in any case because its simple presence is likely causing some degree of pathological effect. This is a rather different situation, and while I'm not myself a neurosurgeon or indeed anything at all in the medical field except possibly an occasional annoyance, I tend to think that "hey, let's see if we'll find anything this time!" is probably not considered a sufficient reason to perform brain surgery. I could totally be wrong about that, though!
donquichotte 9y ago
"The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL" What a ridiculous statement to make! Even probabilistically this makes no sense, since the players are selected out of 3e8 out of 7e9 humans. Check out socker players, marathon runners, climbers etc and you will see that every sport has their very own geniuses.
- naeem 9y ago
  Marathon runners, climbers, etc you mentioned have a pretty narrow field of physical competence. No way in hell a climber can compare athletically to LeBron James.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ta4399 9y ago
    yeah, LeBron James isn't an NFL player, so I guess you are agreeing?
- bigbluedots 9y ago
  That depends on what the metrics are that make up "impressive" in this context. Since those are entirely subjective (I may be impressed by an athlete's endurance, but the author may be impressed by physical strength, etc) the quoted statement is meaningless anyway.
aviv 9y ago
> Researchers are working to develop a test for people still alive so they can begin to study the disease more comprehensively. What more is there to study? Getting knocked in the head for years is bad for you. Do we really need scientists to tell us this? Who in their right mind thinks getting hit in the head on a regular basis will have no negative affects on their well-being? The solution is not some new treatment - it's to... uhm, stop getting your head knocked on a regular basis.
- coliveira 9y ago
  That will be the logical thing to do, but you know... money... the NFL doesn't seem to care about anything else.
  - aceofspad3s 9y ago
    Why blame the NFL? It's not like the players are doing it for free.
    - saboot 9y ago
      Because the NFL could "easily" change the rules to minimize the effects of CTE. Easily is in quotes because it's easy except for a fear of losing money.
      - slg 9y ago
        It really can't. There are many potential smaller changes that could shave a percentage point or two of the risk factor (and the NFL has already made a handful of those type of changes), but the game of football is setup in such a way that head trauma is a guaranteed byproduct. As other pointed out, the cigarette argument is apt. You can make things marginally safer, but there is never going to be such a thing as a "safe cigarette".
      - aceofspad3s 9y ago
        It's like a game of gladiators... You can't take the fun off of it.
elchief 9y ago
Aaron Hernandez (New England Patriot, murderer) had severe CTE when he died at 27 http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/health/aaron-hernandez-brain-cte/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/health/aaron-hernandez-brain-c...
ekianjo 9y ago
The article contradicts the title. The tau protein test using markers is unable to diffentiate between CTE and Alzheimer. And by the way there are already FDA approved Tau protein tests on the market so from the article it is not clear what is the new discovery about.
pizza 9y ago
"I can't believe people were so dumb about smoking in the 1950s.. how were they so dumb? did they not know it caused cancer?" this is a kinda modern equivalent, imo..
- woolvalley 9y ago
  At least it's limited to a small few playing a sport, vs. pretty much every adult.
  - joe_the_user 9y ago
    How many kids play tackle football in High School? How many young people play tackle football in college? How many parent allow this?
  - mobilefriendly 9y ago
    Well over 1 million American boys and young men play football every year. The game is a rite of passage. Further these studies have implications for head contact that occurs in other sports and in general.
    - lgas 9y ago
      I'm not trying to diminish the suffering/risks/etc of a million people, but that is about one-third of one percent of the US population so I think woolvalley's comment is pretty on point.
      - meddlepal 9y ago
        It's a much larger percent though of just male children say ages 12 to 18. And there's a new set of victims every year.
      - code_duck 9y ago
        That’s just the quantity that are actively playing it now. The important thing is, what proportion of adults played as children? According to statistics online, football is the most popular high school sport, with participation twice that of the nearest, basketball, and 2/3 of children participate in organized sports. I looked it up, and apparently the stats for tackle football are about 4.5% of kids 6-12 and 9% in the 13-17 range.
vuyani 9y ago
If anyone is curious, this is the doctor played by will smith in the movie concusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io6hPdC41RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io6hPdC41RM
- lstyls 9y ago
  From the article: > Now the San Joaquin medical examiner, Omalu was featured in the movie, “Concussion.”
enraged_camel 9y ago
I’ve never been a huge football fan but never avoided it either. Until, that is, when we started hearing about CTE and how the NFL tried (still tries) to cover it up and downplay it. Today I find football unwatchable. Every time I see players slamming into each other at full speed I feel queasy. I’m also ethically against watching it because I don’t want to support the football industry. There are many other sports in the world I’d rather watch.
- jim-jim-jim 9y ago
  The rules of football make for a really interesting game, but the fact that the NFL/NCAA are such awful organizations + the growing concerns about its safety make it impossible for me to actually enjoy it. Hopefully we'll have robots playing it for us one day.
  - edejong 9y ago
    Hopefully robots will eventually be intelligent enough not to willfully damage their central processing unit.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Thus leading to remotely piloted football bots and the Super Bowl wifi eavesdropping scandal of 2079.
rurban 9y ago
More importantly "110 of the 111 brains of former NFL players examined had CTE". So how stupid can you be? In a healthy society this sport would be forbidden by law.
- kakarot 9y ago
  > In a healthy society this sport would be forbidden by law. Give me a break. Are we going to ban football at home, too? Or just at school? What about community leagues? In a healthy society, the dangers would be well-known, minors would always have a right to refuse and forcing a minor to play would be considered child abuse, and children would have to be old enough to form rational opinions before being eligible for leagues or scholastic play. It is not the role of law to keep people from being able to do dangerous things. Law exists to keep people safe from others, and to keep people from being a danger themselves, but not from being a danger to themselves. Consciously choosing dangerous behavior in exchange for some reward is an inalienable human right. Such a draconian law has no place in a healthy society.
  - rurban 9y ago
    It has. Compare to healthy societies.
    - kakarot 9y ago
      Could you elaborate?
      - rurban 9y ago
        Well first, football trainers in highschool and college would face a lot of lawsuites, supporting and even causing death threatening concussions on innocent teens. Which would lead to reforms, like amateur boxing helmets. Which would not be enough, given the football rules and mindset. But loosing the support from amateur sports would lead to less support in the professional killing game. Mom's have a lot of power.
mobilefriendly 9y ago
There's a lot of hate towards the NFL but the NCAA is an even worse actor on CTE. 70,000 college players every year, and they aren't paid professionals like the NFL. But NCAA programs make billions of dollars off of the players (and their coaches millions). Destroying brains for profit, in the context of the education system, is truly evil.
- golergka 9y ago
  I don't understand these arguments. Are they forcing players to do it? If the players are well aware of health risks and still make decision to play the game, how is the sports organization to blame?
  - pizza 9y ago
    Evil runs on volunteers better than it does coerced conscripts.
  - mobilefriendly 9y ago
    95% of the people playing contact football are minor children. The NFL and NCAA, and their equipment partners, underwrite and promote the youth sport but do little to mitigate the brain injury issue...frankly it is unethical to permit under-18 kids to play contact football.
  - adanto6840 9y ago
    College with $50k+ of debt, if even able/eligible to get in -- versus "free" college. In many cases I suspect it's the "only chance" for some of these kids and, at best, it's extreme exhortation for most all of them.
    - golergka 9y ago
      I wasn't aware that people without college education in US suffer from mass starvation and getting it is a matter of life and death.
      - 9y ago
snomad 9y ago
Their is some measurable chance the NFL and football disappear w/in 30 years. Sooner or later a college / high school will lose a lawsuit for a player w/CTE, and schools will have no choice but to stop participation. Once that happens, talent level and interest in the sport will die off. Kinda silly cities are in such a rush to continue building new stadiums. The unspoken elephant whenever these studies come up is skiing and snowboarding. Lots more participants, and I bet the concussion rate is similarly high over X number of visits. Damn well better not make me wear helmet though, my worst injuries came when I had one on (overconfidence syndrome)
- bocklund 9y ago
  I don't think a lawsuit will stop it. There's too much money and citizen support. One way or another, they would settle and it would go away.
  - querulous 9y ago
    as soon as there's a precedent that schools (particularly high schools but also colleges) are financially responsible for CTE in football players (and possibly other sports) they'll be unable to get insurance which means those programs will be shut down without school programs as a pipeline the nfl probably can't continue to exist
- tartuffe78 9y ago
  The NFL has a minimum salary of $450,000. 3-4 years in NFL at that will earn you more than the average American earns in a lifetime. That's probably a rational economic trade-off for the risk of CTE.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    NFL salaries aren’t guaranteed by default. That 450k is paid weekly during the season and the player can be cut at any time. I don’t know what the median amount of money earned by NFL players is but it is likely well below 1.5 million.
- 9y ago
joekrill 9y ago
It's not conclusive: > But the scan also identifies protein found in Alzheimer’s patients, making it difficult for a definitive conclusion. That’s one reason Omalu performed a postmortem exam of McNeill to confirm the results. So it indicates you've either got CTE or early signs of Alzheimer’s -- bad news either way.
basicplus2 9y ago
CTE Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (degenerative disease)
lamename 9y ago
Paper: https://academic.oup.com/neurosurgery/advance-article/doi/10.1093/neuros/nyx536/4616608 https://academic.oup.com/neurosurgery/advance-article/doi/10... (maybe paywalled)
horungefitta 9y ago
most of the damage is done in practice, off season, claims former pro football player Brendan Schaub. (they butt heads over and over again). sohatever rule changes are suggested to the game it needs to adress the off season practice as well.
elhudy 9y ago
According to the article, the doctors believed they had spotted CTE in a living person, and confirmed that their research was correct upon finding CTE after the person's death. I am having trouble understanding how finding CTE in an NFL linebacker after his death is valid confirmation that previous tests were accurate. What are the odds of finding CTE in an ex-NFL linebacker? One in two?
- dhimes 9y ago
  It's not valid confirmation- the doc said this. He is working on a diagnosis and wasn't sure he was distinguishing between Alzheimer's and CTE. On death, he examined the subject and it was CTE. He's just announcing that result to those following the story. There's a lot more testing to do before he can claim diagnosis.
jjie2221 9y ago
Question for football fans: Would the game suffer that much if we changed the rules to reduce contact? Say, like flag football?
- dlp211 9y ago
  Yes, significantly. One of the biggest draws of football, for better or worst, is the tackling. People watch to see the big hit and the great escapes to evade the tackling. Here is just a single example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8geJp5mVLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8geJp5mVLA If the game used flags, the quarterback would have almost certainly been down. Instead he runs for a first down and keeps his offense on the field.
  - wils1245 9y ago
    Spot on. As further example, check out Barry Sanders highlights: https://youtu.be/eygZLsdKGQM https://youtu.be/eygZLsdKGQM The NFL in slow motion can be beautiful to watch in slow motion. These plays aren’t nearly as exciting without the risk of contact and Sanders’ opportunity and ability to break tackles. That doesn’t mean the game as we know it shouldn’t go.

When NFL players can be diagnosed while they're still playing, or even identify how much their Tau proteins increase after a big hit, that will have a big impact. It seems like it's still easy enough to not think about dying early when getting concussed.

outsideoflife 9y ago

For my American cousins I thought I would mention a little more about Rugby Union. Concussion is less of a problem in Rugby than in American football, and this is not an accident. Rugby is addressing this in several ways. 1) Years of rule changes, and stricter enforcement. Now a top level player who tackles someone above the shoulder, or tackles without attempting to hold on (so no clothes-linse or body checks) will be sent off (which in Rugby is catastrophic to your teams chances). If you lift a player off the ground you are responsible for putting them down again. Drop them on their head and expect a lengthy ban. This hasn't changed the spectacle of Rugby much, if anything the skill levels have improved. 2) Protection. Around your head Rugby only allows you to wear a small soft 'scrum cap' which protects from bruising and wounds from head clashes, like the things boxers suffer with around their eyes. Their is a light collar bone protector which seems to be about 1/5th of the thickness of the equivalent Gridiron gear. That is all. The impacts are still impressive to see, indeed are perhaps more impressive on an un-armoured body, but with lower G-force to the head 3) The size of the people. In both sports their has been an increase in the mass of the players. However US football players seems disproportionately massive. In Rugby their are not rolling substitutions, so you have to carry that mass around for 80 minutes, and therefore a compromise is necessary, perhaps gridiron could restrict the number of subs, or the squad size so the bruisers actually had to run. The miracle of sports nutrition, with the characteristic protruding jaw bones, seem to be producing bigger players than they may if they had effective controls against doping. Yes I said it, from across the pond, it looks like steroid abuse is rife in several US sports. 4) The concussion protocol. Any player that appears to have been knocked out in Rugby gets sent from the pitch to be examined by a doctor for a minimum of 10 minutes. If concussion is detected there is a mandatory period off playing. If concussion recurs this can be months! Welsh International George North suffered repeated concussions and missed most of the following year. During this same period Rugby has become a tougher sport than ever, but without killing the brains of our young men

Havoc 9y ago
While the efforts made certainly help there is no getting around the fact that it is an impact sport. That combined with a culture of being tough means that few ‘good’ players escape completely injury free. Short of touch rugby there will still be head impacts and that will have an effect of varying degrees - just maybe not noticeable. Personally I find it difficult to understand how parents can let their kids play rugby when there is such overwhelming evidence that it’s risky at best.
- yesthrowaway234 9y ago
  I've hurt myself far less playing rugby than soccer, and had way more fun too. Yes, it's a high impact sport, and that's exactly why there are a lot of rules to prevent anyone from getting seriously injured. Also, the objective of Rugby is to get the "ball" at the other side of the camp while avoiding the most friction possible, not to hurt each other. In fact, we were often encouraged to avoid contact whenever possible and to pass the ball whenever we could. There is also a lot of training on how to to fall and how to not hurt your opponents too, I wouldn't say it's "risky at best", quite the contrary, I'd recommend the sport to anyone young enough.
  - Havoc 9y ago
    >I've hurt myself far less playing rugby than soccer, Respectfully, self-assessment is exactly the wrong approach here. Play soccer, break a leg. Obvious - leg is broken. Play rugby, lose 5% mental ability - less obvious especially in a self(!)-assessment of one's mental ability. >Also, the objective of Rugby I've been on the receiving side of some nasty rugby tackles...including the type where I don't remember a lot about them. So yes I do understand the objective of Rugby and all that great stuff. >In fact, we were often encouraged to avoid contact whenever possible and to pass the ball whenever we could. If everyone plays a clean textbook version then that works out well. In my experience putting a bunch of determined testosterone fuelled guys on a field does not result in textbook clean though. Not even close. Rugby/Boxing/NFL/whatever...consider this. 99% of NFL post mortems show CTE. Not just a few - 99%. Lets suppose Rugby is way better like literally halves the risk despite both similar contact sports but lets pretend Rugby is way better. Can you really "recommend the sport to anyone young enough" at 49% CTE risk? Telling me about training how to fall is just not going to cut it. So yes "risky at best" is my assessment of the situation. http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/25/health/cte-nfl-players-brains-study/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/25/health/cte-nfl-players-bra...

isatty 9y ago

CTE - Chronic traumatic encephalopathy[0] for anyone else who was confused. The author uses it countless times without explaining what it is. More details - Currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed by direct tissue examination after death, including full and immunohistochemical brain analyses.[15] The lack of in vivo techniques to show distinct biomarkers for CTE is the reason CTE cannot currently be diagnosed while a person is alive...[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy#Diagnosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...

anigbrowl 9y ago
The very first line of the story says what it is: Researchers have identified the degenerative brain disease known as CTE... It's a newspaper rather than a scientific journal so I think they can be forgiven for not expanding the acronym, just as newspapers commonly report heart attacks rather than myocardial infarctions.
- acchow 9y ago
  For the vast majority of their readers "Chronic traumatic encephalopathy" is just as uninformative as "CTE".
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Well yes, that's the point of saying 'degenerative brain disease' instead.
- jwilk 9y ago
  They do expand the acronym in the second paragraph: ... to identify chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the living.

nerglish 9y ago

common table expression?

LearnerHerzog 9y ago
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...

wdewind 9y ago

I didn't grow up playing or really understanding sports. I was one of those guys who joked about "sportsball" and stuff like that. When I started really taking weight training seriously I started having a frame of reference for understanding sports and started really appreciating them. Football is a sport that is designed to really allow people to showcase the limits of the human body. The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL and when you think about the things that happen in any single game, they truly are spectacular. OBJ's "The Catch" is one of the most impressive things in the history of sports period. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818_M8gOnqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818_M8gOnqQ But the NFL is finding itself in a really tough position. I love this sport, but I find it ethically difficult to watch now. It would be one thing if the NFL was doing everything it could to protect its athletes, but it's absolutely clear they are trying to bury their heads in the sand on this one: > “We need a couple million of dollars. What is stopping us is the money. We’re ready to roll.” Think about this: we currently have no way to diagnose CTE in living people, we think we may have a way, the "we" in that is pretty credible as its the person who discovered CTE, and it will cost roughly $2mm, and the NFL isn't tripping over themselves to write the check for some reason. It would cost 12 seconds of superbowl ad revenue to fund this, and in fact the NFL has pledged $100mm to investigate CTE, but basically they just aren't doing it: http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20509977/nfl-takes-control-brain-research-100-million-donation-all-ending-partnerships-entities http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20509977/nfl-takes-c... This is kind of shameful, and as a fan of this sport I really hope they figure out how to have a better position on this issue, because what's going on right now is not sustainable.

madebysquares 9y ago
I have been wat hung football since i was kid but like you the past couple of years it has become harder to justify watching these big hits and traumatic injuries knowing the damage it is doing to players when they get older.
anigbrowl 9y ago
OBJ's "The Catch" is one of the most impressive things in the history of sports period. Every sports record is hailed as the most impressive thing in sports ever. I think your enthusiasm for the sport might be leading you into a bit of hyperbole here.

madebysquares 9y ago

This would be a game changer and potentially life saving for hundreds of athletes in all contact sports but mostly American football. I they can find the funding they need to further their research.

icelancer 9y ago
The problem is that the NFL stifles and blocks as many methods as possible in this regard. Though I'll admit it's rapidly changing, and for the better.
scientismist 9y ago
The best way to start saving lives is to get people to stop playing these types of sports.

ulrikrasmussen 9y ago

Does the difficulty in diagnosis stem from the fact that it is hard to differentiate CTE from other degenerative brain diseases, or is it just hard to diagnose in the living altogether? I mean, is the presence of Alzheimer's-like symptoms a necessary but not sufficient condition? Being able to rule out the condition would be very valuable to former contact sport athletes worrying about the disease.

tmh79 9y ago
from what I understand, it is currently a chemical test that requires a biopsy or tissue sample, which is difficult to get from the brain because well, you remove part of the brain, which is bad.
- ulrikrasmussen 9y ago
  Right, that is to diagnose CTE post-mortem. But does CTE also cause other phyiscal symptoms which are just indistinguishable from regular Alzheimer's? For instance, would a person with CTE also have visible plaques on an MRI, or is the disease really invisible in the living? The fact that they found CTE in 110 out of 111 NFL players post-mortem should indicate that they had a pretty good idea about which players to pick for autopsy. Was those picks based on their history of psychological issues alone, or were there other indicators such as definite signs of Alzheimer's?
  - ddorian43 9y ago
    Many brain disease don't show on MRI (schizophrenia, depression, bipolar etc).
- ekianjo 9y ago
  brain biopsies are routinely performed for brain tumors so its not that uncommon.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    But that's to characterize a known lesion, which may require aggressive treatment depending upon its type, and will likely require excision in any case because its simple presence is likely causing some degree of pathological effect. This is a rather different situation, and while I'm not myself a neurosurgeon or indeed anything at all in the medical field except possibly an occasional annoyance, I tend to think that "hey, let's see if we'll find anything this time!" is probably not considered a sufficient reason to perform brain surgery. I could totally be wrong about that, though!

donquichotte 9y ago

"The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL" What a ridiculous statement to make! Even probabilistically this makes no sense, since the players are selected out of 3e8 out of 7e9 humans. Check out socker players, marathon runners, climbers etc and you will see that every sport has their very own geniuses.

naeem 9y ago
Marathon runners, climbers, etc you mentioned have a pretty narrow field of physical competence. No way in hell a climber can compare athletically to LeBron James.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ta4399 9y ago
  yeah, LeBron James isn't an NFL player, so I guess you are agreeing?
bigbluedots 9y ago
That depends on what the metrics are that make up "impressive" in this context. Since those are entirely subjective (I may be impressed by an athlete's endurance, but the author may be impressed by physical strength, etc) the quoted statement is meaningless anyway.

aviv 9y ago

> Researchers are working to develop a test for people still alive so they can begin to study the disease more comprehensively. What more is there to study? Getting knocked in the head for years is bad for you. Do we really need scientists to tell us this? Who in their right mind thinks getting hit in the head on a regular basis will have no negative affects on their well-being? The solution is not some new treatment - it's to... uhm, stop getting your head knocked on a regular basis.

coliveira 9y ago
That will be the logical thing to do, but you know... money... the NFL doesn't seem to care about anything else.
- aceofspad3s 9y ago
  Why blame the NFL? It's not like the players are doing it for free.
  - saboot 9y ago
    Because the NFL could "easily" change the rules to minimize the effects of CTE. Easily is in quotes because it's easy except for a fear of losing money.
    - slg 9y ago
      It really can't. There are many potential smaller changes that could shave a percentage point or two of the risk factor (and the NFL has already made a handful of those type of changes), but the game of football is setup in such a way that head trauma is a guaranteed byproduct. As other pointed out, the cigarette argument is apt. You can make things marginally safer, but there is never going to be such a thing as a "safe cigarette".
    - aceofspad3s 9y ago
      It's like a game of gladiators... You can't take the fun off of it.

elchief 9y ago

Aaron Hernandez (New England Patriot, murderer) had severe CTE when he died at 27 http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/health/aaron-hernandez-brain-cte/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/health/aaron-hernandez-brain-c...

ekianjo 9y ago

The article contradicts the title. The tau protein test using markers is unable to diffentiate between CTE and Alzheimer. And by the way there are already FDA approved Tau protein tests on the market so from the article it is not clear what is the new discovery about.

pizza 9y ago

"I can't believe people were so dumb about smoking in the 1950s.. how were they so dumb? did they not know it caused cancer?" this is a kinda modern equivalent, imo..

woolvalley 9y ago
At least it's limited to a small few playing a sport, vs. pretty much every adult.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  How many kids play tackle football in High School? How many young people play tackle football in college? How many parent allow this?
- mobilefriendly 9y ago
  Well over 1 million American boys and young men play football every year. The game is a rite of passage. Further these studies have implications for head contact that occurs in other sports and in general.
  - lgas 9y ago
    I'm not trying to diminish the suffering/risks/etc of a million people, but that is about one-third of one percent of the US population so I think woolvalley's comment is pretty on point.
    - meddlepal 9y ago
      It's a much larger percent though of just male children say ages 12 to 18. And there's a new set of victims every year.
    - code_duck 9y ago
      That’s just the quantity that are actively playing it now. The important thing is, what proportion of adults played as children? According to statistics online, football is the most popular high school sport, with participation twice that of the nearest, basketball, and 2/3 of children participate in organized sports. I looked it up, and apparently the stats for tackle football are about 4.5% of kids 6-12 and 9% in the 13-17 range.

vuyani 9y ago

If anyone is curious, this is the doctor played by will smith in the movie concusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io6hPdC41RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io6hPdC41RM

lstyls 9y ago
From the article: > Now the San Joaquin medical examiner, Omalu was featured in the movie, “Concussion.”

enraged_camel 9y ago

I’ve never been a huge football fan but never avoided it either. Until, that is, when we started hearing about CTE and how the NFL tried (still tries) to cover it up and downplay it. Today I find football unwatchable. Every time I see players slamming into each other at full speed I feel queasy. I’m also ethically against watching it because I don’t want to support the football industry. There are many other sports in the world I’d rather watch.

jim-jim-jim 9y ago
The rules of football make for a really interesting game, but the fact that the NFL/NCAA are such awful organizations + the growing concerns about its safety make it impossible for me to actually enjoy it. Hopefully we'll have robots playing it for us one day.
- edejong 9y ago
  Hopefully robots will eventually be intelligent enough not to willfully damage their central processing unit.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Thus leading to remotely piloted football bots and the Super Bowl wifi eavesdropping scandal of 2079.

rurban 9y ago

More importantly "110 of the 111 brains of former NFL players examined had CTE". So how stupid can you be? In a healthy society this sport would be forbidden by law.

kakarot 9y ago
> In a healthy society this sport would be forbidden by law. Give me a break. Are we going to ban football at home, too? Or just at school? What about community leagues? In a healthy society, the dangers would be well-known, minors would always have a right to refuse and forcing a minor to play would be considered child abuse, and children would have to be old enough to form rational opinions before being eligible for leagues or scholastic play. It is not the role of law to keep people from being able to do dangerous things. Law exists to keep people safe from others, and to keep people from being a danger themselves, but not from being a danger to themselves. Consciously choosing dangerous behavior in exchange for some reward is an inalienable human right. Such a draconian law has no place in a healthy society.
- rurban 9y ago
  It has. Compare to healthy societies.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    Could you elaborate?
    - rurban 9y ago
      Well first, football trainers in highschool and college would face a lot of lawsuites, supporting and even causing death threatening concussions on innocent teens. Which would lead to reforms, like amateur boxing helmets. Which would not be enough, given the football rules and mindset. But loosing the support from amateur sports would lead to less support in the professional killing game. Mom's have a lot of power.

mobilefriendly 9y ago

There's a lot of hate towards the NFL but the NCAA is an even worse actor on CTE. 70,000 college players every year, and they aren't paid professionals like the NFL. But NCAA programs make billions of dollars off of the players (and their coaches millions). Destroying brains for profit, in the context of the education system, is truly evil.

golergka 9y ago
I don't understand these arguments. Are they forcing players to do it? If the players are well aware of health risks and still make decision to play the game, how is the sports organization to blame?
- pizza 9y ago
  Evil runs on volunteers better than it does coerced conscripts.
- mobilefriendly 9y ago
  95% of the people playing contact football are minor children. The NFL and NCAA, and their equipment partners, underwrite and promote the youth sport but do little to mitigate the brain injury issue...frankly it is unethical to permit under-18 kids to play contact football.
- adanto6840 9y ago
  College with $50k+ of debt, if even able/eligible to get in -- versus "free" college. In many cases I suspect it's the "only chance" for some of these kids and, at best, it's extreme exhortation for most all of them.
  - golergka 9y ago
    I wasn't aware that people without college education in US suffer from mass starvation and getting it is a matter of life and death.
    - 9y ago

snomad 9y ago

Their is some measurable chance the NFL and football disappear w/in 30 years. Sooner or later a college / high school will lose a lawsuit for a player w/CTE, and schools will have no choice but to stop participation. Once that happens, talent level and interest in the sport will die off. Kinda silly cities are in such a rush to continue building new stadiums. The unspoken elephant whenever these studies come up is skiing and snowboarding. Lots more participants, and I bet the concussion rate is similarly high over X number of visits. Damn well better not make me wear helmet though, my worst injuries came when I had one on (overconfidence syndrome)

bocklund 9y ago
I don't think a lawsuit will stop it. There's too much money and citizen support. One way or another, they would settle and it would go away.
- querulous 9y ago
  as soon as there's a precedent that schools (particularly high schools but also colleges) are financially responsible for CTE in football players (and possibly other sports) they'll be unable to get insurance which means those programs will be shut down without school programs as a pipeline the nfl probably can't continue to exist
tartuffe78 9y ago
The NFL has a minimum salary of $450,000. 3-4 years in NFL at that will earn you more than the average American earns in a lifetime. That's probably a rational economic trade-off for the risk of CTE.
- paulcole 9y ago
  NFL salaries aren’t guaranteed by default. That 450k is paid weekly during the season and the player can be cut at any time. I don’t know what the median amount of money earned by NFL players is but it is likely well below 1.5 million.
9y ago

joekrill 9y ago

It's not conclusive: > But the scan also identifies protein found in Alzheimer’s patients, making it difficult for a definitive conclusion. That’s one reason Omalu performed a postmortem exam of McNeill to confirm the results. So it indicates you've either got CTE or early signs of Alzheimer’s -- bad news either way.

basicplus2 9y ago

CTE Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (degenerative disease)

lamename 9y ago

Paper: https://academic.oup.com/neurosurgery/advance-article/doi/10.1093/neuros/nyx536/4616608 https://academic.oup.com/neurosurgery/advance-article/doi/10... (maybe paywalled)

horungefitta 9y ago

most of the damage is done in practice, off season, claims former pro football player Brendan Schaub. (they butt heads over and over again). sohatever rule changes are suggested to the game it needs to adress the off season practice as well.

elhudy 9y ago

According to the article, the doctors believed they had spotted CTE in a living person, and confirmed that their research was correct upon finding CTE after the person's death. I am having trouble understanding how finding CTE in an NFL linebacker after his death is valid confirmation that previous tests were accurate. What are the odds of finding CTE in an ex-NFL linebacker? One in two?

dhimes 9y ago
It's not valid confirmation- the doc said this. He is working on a diagnosis and wasn't sure he was distinguishing between Alzheimer's and CTE. On death, he examined the subject and it was CTE. He's just announcing that result to those following the story. There's a lot more testing to do before he can claim diagnosis.

jjie2221 9y ago

Question for football fans: Would the game suffer that much if we changed the rules to reduce contact? Say, like flag football?

dlp211 9y ago
Yes, significantly. One of the biggest draws of football, for better or worst, is the tackling. People watch to see the big hit and the great escapes to evade the tackling. Here is just a single example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8geJp5mVLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8geJp5mVLA If the game used flags, the quarterback would have almost certainly been down. Instead he runs for a first down and keeps his offense on the field.
- wils1245 9y ago
  Spot on. As further example, check out Barry Sanders highlights: https://youtu.be/eygZLsdKGQM https://youtu.be/eygZLsdKGQM The NFL in slow motion can be beautiful to watch in slow motion. These plays aren’t nearly as exciting without the risk of contact and Sanders’ opportunity and ability to break tackles. That doesn’t mean the game as we know it shouldn’t go.