CTE Found in 99% of Former NFL Players in New Study
New research found CTE in virtually every former NFL player included in the study, 110 of 111 or 99%, to be exact. It was found in 87% of players at all levels studied.
Here is a brief article from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/health/cte-nfl-players-brains-study/index…
Here is the actual research from JAMA: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2645104
Now, the article mentions right up front that this is a "convenience sample." For those not familiar with research methods, that means the authors studied what they had on hand to study, and did not randomize their sample. CTE can only be identified during autopsies, and thus they are doing autopsies of brains that have been donated for study. Those donating their brains (or their families) are, in most cases, suspicious that the player had CTE or some other neurological disease, and they donate the player's brain to confirm this. Therefore, these results may not (and probably do not) generalize to the broader football playing population.
That being said, this is really horrifying. If even a substantial percentage of NFLers develop CTE - far short of 99% - how long can the sport last in its current form? I love football, but as I tell others, I won't let my son play, and he desperately wants to. I've told him when he's in high school and "old enough" to make his own adult decision, he can. But not now (he's only 11).
P.S. This is not OT. This applies to every football player and program at every level.
And I will say it again. The NFL will be drastically different or non-existent in 25-30 years. There's just too much coming out about the sport and the harms it does to the body.
Studies have been done that there are less and less parents getting involved with pee-wee and junior level football. Players are retiring way sooner than they used to.
I think they will continue to legislate some of the big hits out , but I don't think football is going anywhere. Too many people still smoke, drink to excess, do drugs or eat their way to health problems for me to believe our population will pass up millions of dollars playing the game because of long term health concearns.
If the best athletes don't play, today's 2nd teir of athletes are still better than most 1980's and 1990's athletes. At worst, the game will digress to that level of athlete but with modern offences.
That being said, I'm an idiot and usually wrong about most long term prognostications so...
I also said it will change drastically. That's the part that I am more attached to than going away completely.
It has to change. There's no way that they can keep this up decade after decade. The NFL has told players to grin and bear it. Their health care post-NFL is dog bleep. It's a machine that they cycle through players, give them their money, and let them go out and deal with all of the post-life stuff.
This is a new animal for football. Technology has not been available to this sort of testing, and people are becoming more and more aware of how their lives change after the game.
The game HAS to change.
What??
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Beyond the legal issues that this study suggests, if it is truly reflective of the rest of the NFL, isn't there a moral/ethical issue at the college level? Would you feel the same way about football Saturdays knowing that Denard Robinson or other members of our football team were going to exhibit a full blown case of CTE in a few decades?
If that were your kid out there, knowing what is potentially in his future, would you feel the same way?
I think this headline and the way the Boston center is promoting this research is very irresponsible.
What we are seeing with these numbers is explainable by sampling bias alone. They are calling it a "convenience sample" but they specifically solicit brains from NFL players who have died early or who had symptoms. Every time they collect a few more, they publish a new headline with "X out of X" show CTE. They did it when there were 78 or so and now they have 100.
This is like asking for the prostates of NFL players who had trouble urinating while alive and showing that all of them show signs of inflammation, and then concluding that playing football damages the prostate.
It's quite possible that if they went to the non-football playing public with similar methods -- if you experienced dementia, loss of memory, etc., please let us examine your brain post-mortem -- that they would find a similar proportion of brains with these anatomical features.
It's likely that playing football is not good for one's brain. But the sample here is so biased that they make these numbers close to meaningless, and the fact that these researchers are willing to have the press present the data in this way is extremely worrisome.
What the headline should read: Relatives of deceased NFL players who have heard about CTE and suspect their loved one had signs of dementia tend to donate their brains to us, and those brains do indeed show signs of dementia.
I work in neuroimaging and I continue to be astonished that journals like JAMA are willing to pubilsh this kind of thing without a random sample and without a control group, and that the authors do not correct the press when they write articles suggesting that the incidence of CTE in NFL players is something like 99%.
The science is what it is - it is just presenting the findings found. It is noteworthy that this large sample invariably had findings of CTE. It is certainly worthy of publication, dissemination and further research. No, we don't know yet what the true rate of CTE is among those playing football. I also don't think it is established that the findings of CTE are causitive of the symptoms these players exhibited.
With that said, there's a lot of smoke here and this is an area that needs further study.
No, it's a poor study design. We really don't learn very much from it about the relationship between playing football and brain pathology.
A good way to determine the incidence of pathology in NFL players' brains would be to obtain a random sample of their brains and compare it to non-NFL players with similar health backgrounds. There are now a few studies that have done this. This study isn't one of them.
A very bad way would be to collect only those brains whose minds showed the symptoms already.
I agree that the topic is worthy of further research.
When people hear the 99% number, they are just as likely to say, "CTE must not be that bad, then?" as anything else-- since there are older NFL players that are as cogent and present as anyone else that age. I suspect that the real number is close to 45%, which is still a crisis but has the advantage of sounding plausible.
I get that you will be able to reason rationally with that information, (and maybe a signigicant percentage will), but most people won't, much historical study, and modern research as well, overwhelmingly indicates just how much people operate on fear and fear alone.
It's why we live in the headline/sensationalist world today.
Why can't I yell "fire!" on a plane, when clearly if everyone with their own faculties can conclude there is no fire? Or, a million other similar restrictions that we take for granted.
I wish people could reason more soundly (myself included), but alas, without proper reflection, we really, really, reeeeeeally do not.
From what I've read about the study, though, the brains submitted weren't necessarily ones that exhibited symptoms of CTE, they're just brains of players who had experienced head trauma. So it's not quite akin to your prostate example. And while it's not a random sample by any stretch, it still seems like a pretty significant finding.
This is legitimately terrifying. In my opinion, CTE is one of the worst ways to go.
Even if the "true" risk (if a random sample were tested) is only, say, 10%, is any sport worth a one in ten chance of CTE's symptoms?
That's exactly right. As I tried to make clear in my post, I very seriously doubt 99% of all NFL players get CTE. This sample is, in fact, the opposite of random (it selects on the dependent variable). But let's say it doubles the real risk from 50% to 99%. Can you imagine saying to someone, "OK, you should get involved in football. If you make it to the highest level, you'll be rich. However, you'll also have a 50-50 chance of developing a debilitating and fatal neurological disorder that will make you suicidal, demented, and lead to your early death."
of the article, not the OP. It would be like a cancer center saying 99% of their patients have cancer. Only families of decesased players have submitted the remains to be examined. Only players who have died prematurely and exhibited signs/symptoms of CTE to be more specific. The article is informative, but the title is very click-baitish. People will see the title and think 99% of former players have CTE! In my opinion, this is what will change football, optics. More than the actual truth, articles and broad, incomplete articles will cause people to take an uninformed stance.
The requirement for brains to be submitted to this study is that they had to be brains that had experienced repeated head trauma. That description applies to virtually all football players.
And while it's likely true that the brains submitted had experienced more trauma than most, research has shown that even repeated sub-concussive impacts can lead to CTE. So although you're right that this study doesn't indicate that 99% of football players will get CTE, it's still very scary news.
Not sure where the game goes from here. Obviously there will still be consumer demand driving these leagues and kids will still want to play, but you can't ignore that kids are probably beginning to sustain these injuries at very young ages. I'd imagine you have to significantly alter the rules around how people tackle, what kind of contact is permissible (for both offensive and defensive players), etc.
The sport isn't going to go away, but it's going to have to change. They had to make changes early in the 20th century to adapt and rugby continues to be viable. They can make additional changes to keep the sport sustainable
No doubt about it.
The NFL is a superpower, but once they start getting hit with bigtime lawsuits and players stop playing football, it will have to adapt.
Maybe I am naive or in the dark, but I rarely hear this stuff coming out about rugby. The sport makes no damn sense to me, but the CTEs haven't been talked about very much in the public.
This sport has become a launching pad for players. And one boom to the head, you can be messed up for a long time.
contact: the state or condition of physical touching.
impact: the action of one object coming forcibly into contact with another.
Seems to me like they are both contact sports. You could argue that football has greater impacts, but guys playing rugby are running at full steam just like football players. Years ago, rugby players might have actually been running faster, since they weren't weighted down by shoulder pads, hip pads, tailbone pads, thigh pads and knee pads. But many skill position football players and defensive backs have gotten rid of leg pads in the interest of speed, making their collisions more impactful.
The difference is that football players wear helmets and use them as weapons. Rugby players know that they can't lead with their heads, or else they are going to be the one getting hurt. But I don't think the answer is to get rid of the helmet, because that would just send us back 50 or 100 years when football was almost outlawed because of safety concerns. Perhaps the helmet makers need to come up with a better helmet. Or the players need to learn to tackle properly (and the officials need to enforce this by calling targeting or spearing or whatever you want to call it.)
It's a difficult issue, for sure.
"Better and better" helments is, perversely, one of the conditions that has led to the present day problem. Being told the helmet reduces concussions by X %, and the physical feeling of hit bring softer and less jarring conveys a false sense of neurological safety and encourages cranial weaponization. The reason rugby players tackle properly, in addition to the rules, is because they would be more immediately destroying themselves if they treated their heads as battering rams.
In general, your point on tackling is well taken and promoting rugby style wrap up tackling, and not big hit blow up tackling (and amending/enforcing the relevant rules) is the only way to go in the long run.
Regarding the lawsuits - they just settled a very large one, and the ability to claim negligence down the line is severely cut off by the fact that there is not an assumption of risk. If anything the NFL essentailly grew big by hiding this and now has the power to withstand it. It's not the first market that has done this (as others have mentioned, the Tobacco industry is similar). It may change, but I doubt it goes away.
On other spots - there are studies on it. Plenty of sports have concussion rates that are something to be sure you're educated about - I haven't seen one on rugby because the volume (or organized volume( is not as large as other sports in the US, I believe, which might make it harder to study.
Football is obviously one of the highest:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2987636/
You don't hear this stuff about rugby because there is *no* coverage here about the faults of rugby. People keep saying to take away the helmets because concussions and CTE don't happen in Rugby or Soccer, but they do, and it's quite serious. It's quite clear, though, that the CTE researchers (especially at BU) have no interest in testing brain samples from other sports because it doesn't fit their agenda.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/depression-continues-to-… , http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion/89765211/duncan-garner-tackling-th… , http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/10739111/One-in-four-football…. , http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3264739/Rugby-dangerous-not-d… .
The coverage surrounding CTE and football is no doubt because football is a large target and it's a juicy target for controversy. One of the best ways to get attention as a journalist or a researcher is to pick a fight with a holy national institution - and to be honest, they've succeeded. People are very familiar with the worst possible outcome of CTE. But for every sensationalized headline, it just feels cheap. CTE is a serious issue, but we're doing ourselves a disservice by automatically associating it with football and football only. We don't even have a set of statistically convincing data to associate CTE with sub-concussive hits at the pee-wee through high school levels. You know, we could say that we should pull our kids out of these contact sports (soccer, football, hockey, baseball, basketball, rugby, etc) but until they get to the semi-pro level, we might be taking away the benefits they would get from participation in sports: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532417/
I know one of the BU researchers and disagree with the statement that they don't want to test samples from other sports or that they are (now) targeting the NFL or football.
Yes, it's probably the most tested and readibly available samples, but it is not their only focus.
Roger Goodell right now.
This is a really unfair headline given the way the study was done.
Well then, thank heavens we're all smart and patient enough here to read two more whole paragraphs and see all the caveats i added!!!
you spect me to read?
I didn't come here to play school....
Seriously, is it that hard? I posted the 99% figure in the headline for two reasons: 1. It is correct, with the caveats I then added to the text; 2. It is how these findings will be described in the headlines of virtually every article that comes out on this, whether fair or not. Thus, this is how it will reflect on the sport and shape opinions - again, whether fair or not.
Here is a selection of articles out this morning:
"CTE found in 99% of studied brains from deceased NFL players" ~CNN
"Study: CTE diagnosed in 99% of former NFL players, 87% of ex-players at all levels" ~USA Today
"Study diagnoses CTE in 99% of deceased NFL players' brains" ~Daily Mail
No, I got the joke. This response was to the "this headline is misleading" guy above you, really, who I think you were referencing with your "yous spect me to reads?" So in a way, the joke went over YOUR head! :-D
I wasn't criticizing it as a thread title necessarily. Actually was more referring to how the media is reporting the results of the study. It reads like "99% of all NFL players have CTE!!!" when that isn't shown by the study. The study essentially shows that 99% of players who donate their brain (probably because they have CTE symptoms) have CTE.
My apologies for the snippy reply, then. And I agree, it's a bit sensationalized. That said, it is how it will be portrayed everywhere, fair or not, and this I think will be pretty damaging to the sport.
even with OP providing details, following up with this is really horrifying...
It's as though you're saying this data is very obviously stated that it is incomplete and 100% slanted...but these resuts are terrible. 110/111 people who have died of CTE that were autopsied out of the tens of thousands of NFL players..HAVE CTE. It truly is horrifying.
Bring back leather helmets and people will stop hitting each other as hard at they can.
Keep the helmet, lose the facemask. Achieves the same objective, but still mostly protects the head if incidental contact occurs.
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but I'm intrigued. On the whole, I think if you took the mask away, a lot of guys are going to be a lot more careful with their heads. You'll see a lot more guys trying to wrap up and keep their head out of the action. It could be effective?
The NFL really screwed the pooch by burying this evidence for so long. It was bound to come out eventually. NFL owners should have been sacrificing some of their astounding profits over the last decade or two to the development of safer helmets. And now that there look to be some promising technological breakthroughs, the NFL should be making sure those are being distributed at all levels of football. But of course, the sacrificing of short term profits/interests for long term goals has never exactly been humans strong suit.
Studies like these are really scary (even with the self-selection caveat that FauxMo made), and make me glad my sons are soccer athletes - even with the injury risks inherent there.
The big revelation for me over the past few years is the "microconcussions" that seemingly lead to CTE. It was easy to rationalize my unfettered enjoyment of football when it was just concussions we worried about. Concussion protocols, etc., can deal with a lot of that risk.
The risk of the big uglies on the line pounding eachother every single play? That's much harder to mitigate.
Hate to break it to you, but men's soccer is only below football and ice hockey for concussion frequency:
This is true, but as he posted, it's not just about concussions. Soccer does not have the constant collisions that accumulate over time.
That's true. But soccer does have people using their head to hit a ball that is moving at a high rate of speed. With so little known about CTE, I don't think you can blindly dismiss the risk factor from headers.