Slashdot Mirror
Degenerative Brain Disease Found In Nearly All Donated NFL Player Brains, Says Study (npr.org)
A new study published Tuesday in the journal American Medical Association found that 110 out of 111 brains of those who played in the NFL had degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). NPR reports: In the study, researchers examined the brains of 202 deceased former football players at all levels. Nearly 88 percent of all the brains, 177, had CTE. Three of 14 who had played only in high school had CTE, 48 of 53 college players, 9 of 14 semiprofessional players, and 7 of 8 Canadian Football League players. CTE was not found in the brains of two who played football before high school. According to the study's senior author, Dr. Ann McKee, "this is by far the largest [study] of individuals who developed CTE that has ever been described. And it only includes individuals who are exposed to head trauma by participation in football." A CTE study several years ago by McKee and her colleagues included football players and athletes from other collision sports such as hockey, soccer and rugby. It also examined the brains of military veterans who had suffered head injuries. The study released Tuesday is the continuation of a study that began eight years ago. In 2015, McKee and fellow researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University published study results revealing 87 of 91 former NFL players had CTE.
Why would someone donate their brain if they didn't think they had damage?
Correlation does not imply causation.
would have CTE if / when we donate our brains. Who says it has anything to do with sports unless "child rearing" is considered a "sport".
you think somebody's gonna donate a perfectly good working brain? You can sell those on eBay or Craigslist for, like $30 bucks. I gave up trying to get human brains from thrift stores back in the early '00s. It wasn't worth my time to raise a corpse from the dead only to have the local villagers come round just because I used an "Abby Normal" brain.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
known for a long time - let's see who wins now - $$ or common sense for self-preservation..
Correlation does not equal causation. Just because all professional NFL players appear to have brain damage, it does not mean that football causes brain damage.
It could also mean that only a brain damaged person would play tackle football.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Beauhd has a degenerative brain disease called hillary-obsessiveitis. Terminal.
Or, perhaps it's just that those with bad brains have a propensity toward football as a career choice. There's a reason for the "dumb jock" stereotype. Which is the cause, which is the effect?
Maybe at some point they all read cdreimer's blog posts?
What about soccer and baseball players?
How can we tell drugs were not a cause?
How about Rock Stars who have a similar pattern of drug use?
I don't want to get brain disease, so my choice is to not donate my brain to science. They probably wouldn't want it anyway.
No shit. Though most aren't intellects to start with.
By the same authors revealed same pattern in various sports with severe risk of head injury. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3624697/
Correlation does not PROVE causation. It can however strongly imply causation, especially as we can plainly see and infer the other mechanisms at play here. Let's not be like the cigarette companies here and turn a blind eye to the likely health dangers with misdirection. As for sample bias, when you are 110 for 111 I don't care what your bias is, the likelihood is that far over half of serious football players suffer brain damage of some sort or severity. Football and boxing are not likely to go away in our generation, but they will have to be modified greatly or they will eventually be considered a sport only us ignorant ancients would engage in.
Letter To Iran
Let me guess: no women were sampled? The world is soooooo sexist.
What is the occurrence of these problems in the general population of people who have never played US football and never suffered a traumatic head injury however caused? If the occurrence is near zero then those who think correlation doesn't mean causation might have pause to think.
While what you say is true but there is considerable evidence showing that the correlation is due to causation. It only occurs in sports where there is repetitive head injury and the effect is apparently similar to those produced when a head is subject to a "blast" and has not been immobilized first according to the Wikipedia page.
Correlation does not equal causation. Just because all professional NFL players appear to have brain damage, it does not mean that football causes brain damage.
Snark all you want but in this case this isn't mere correlation. The condition in question Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Key word there is traumatic. You get that by being hit in the head and receiving brain damage as a result of being concussed. It's the exact same condition seen in boxers and MMA fighters and hockey players and rugby players and soldiers who get concussed repeatedly. So yes it absolutely does mean that playing football in the NFL is a cause for many players of serious brain injury. The fact that some players manage to avoid such injury does not mean that a cause/effect relationship is not in play. It simply means that some managed to avoid getting concussed during their playing career. Your claim is similar to saying smoking doesn't cause cancer because not every smoker gets cancer.
What about soccer and baseball players?
What about them?
How can we tell drugs were not a cause?
Because CTE has a well known and understood cause - namely getting hit in the head. Getting hit in the head happens a LOT in american football. There is no known case in medical science of anyone getting CTE from drug use.
Correlation does not PROVE causation.
It's a distinction without a difference in this case. CTE comes from being hit in the head which demonstrably happens a lot in football. CTE is relatively rare among the general population who do not engage in contact sports or who haven't been violently assaulted. It is quite safe to say that playing football is a common cause of CTE. Causation is not really a question in this instance and the causal chain is well understood. Some players manage to avoid being concussed but that doesn't mean that playing football was not the cause in those who do get CTE. There is no other reasonable explanation for their condition aside from head blows received while playing a violent professional sport.
If I could be paid millions of dollars a year to exercise for hours every day, travel the country, and play a game a weekend for a few months a year, and I knew the paycheck came with the risk of brain damage, would I? Yeah, probably. Would you? I'm guessing you have would have a price not much different that what NFL players make.
As long as players are aware of risks, it should be their decision to accept or turn down contracts. I think the problem many have with the current situation is that the NFL and other agencies (allegedly) attempted to hide the risks from players.
The "allegedly" means that I don't know for fact, and don't care to debate the allegation. If they did, it's wrong but I believe it has been since corrected.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Getting hit in the head is a proven cause of CTE. Professional football players get hit in the head commonly. Professional football players have CTE commonly. There is no other known cause of CTE aside from getting hit in the head. QED playing professional football is a common cause of CTE. The causal chain is quite intact here. The fact that some players manage to avoid brain injury while playing football does not change that causal chain.
Why would someone donate their brain if they didn't think they had damage?
Plenty of people donate their brains for research who do not have CTE or other brain damage. This has been studied among the general population quite thoroughly. There is no need for every football player to donate his brain to avoid sample bias. We have a control group in everyone who doesn't play that sport.
When I was six years old I crashed my bicycle, many more crashes on dirt bikes. I've hit my head so many times and I wonder how much my brain has been injured.
This study had several limitations. First, a major limitation is ascertainment bias associated with participation in this brain donation program. Although the criteria for participation were based on exposure to repetitive head trauma rather than on clinical signs of brain trauma, public awareness of a possible link between repetitive head trauma and CTE may have motivated players and their families with symptoms and signs of brain injury to participate in this research. Therefore, caution must be used in interpreting the high frequency of CTE in this sample, and estimates of prevalence cannot be concluded or implied from this sample.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
I guess that explains why Americans are also the most religious of all western countries.
Of course we had a derogatory saying about drummers as well. My point is: did they check the brains before as well as after? It could just be that damaged brains like football.
it only includes individuals who are exposed to head trauma by participation in football.
Ahhh, so they're trying to link one to the other. Just because you've got it now and are literally in a head-banging sport, it would make sense, but are you absolutely sure they weren't damaged originally? My point still stands.
Besides, they're risking life and limb for their glory and our entertainment, just like hockey, car racing, and just about any other sport. Are you really trying to take their livelihood away from them?
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I have a feeling the NFL is on the way out. Thank god we told Spanos to take his ball and go home, let the saps in LA build his new stadium. Oh wait, it's some billionaire from St Louis who's gonna let Dean camp in his basement.
Whatever, I'm glad we aren't on the hook for an expensive ego booster to some dinky dicked millionare.
Not only that. This study may simply indicate that football players tend to develop CTE when they die, which isn't that worrying.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I mean, american football players aren't necessarily rocket scientists or eloquent poets.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Repeatedly smacking the brain against the bone structure surrounding it will damage the brain. Brains are soft, bones are hard, if you smash the two together, it doesn't take a genius to figure out which takes more damage.
I don't where all these dill weeds came from, but this isn't some blue-sky study to try to prove anything.
It is a study to gather information about a known harm that is affecting people, that has clear and unquestioned causes, but where the extent of damage is not well known.
Like for example if I neglect to water my tomatoes, and it hasn't rained, and I know there is damage from lack of water, I'm not doing a study to find out why the plants are turning yellow. Instead, I'm looking at how many of them are yellow, how yellow are they, what can recover, etc.
There is not just one type of study in the world. That is something to consider if you love talking about studies in a way that would imply you read them or otherwise understand them.
Not as violent (not including the fighting) but hits to the boards are quite more common per game that it makes me wonder if this is going to be a concern
"People who risk smashing their heads into the floor for a living can have noticeable differences in their brains"
Not really surprising, is it? All the padding in the world doesn't absorb the shock of decelerations like that and your brain is a squidy thing inside a bit hard thing, with a bit of leeway and fluid.
No matter how hard the eggshell, you can still break the yolk inside.
Reminds me of a religious conservative taking the age-at-death of a number of porn stars, taking its average, and comparing that with the average age-of-death in the US, totally oblivious to those pornstars who are still alive and the contribution of their ages-at-death, which are presently unknown.
From an epidemiology perspective, the 99% is, of course, useless. It's like saying that 99% of people who had terminal cancer died of cancer.
On the other hand, (and why the fuck isn't this angle being spelt out more??), you have a reasonable number of brains to look at, from which you can infer ways to recognise where the brain injuries come from, and use this to better understand how often these problems occur in general. For example the questions that should be asked are about what sort of tests can we come up with to detect this sort of brain injury sooner.
John_Chalisque
I wonder how much of "correlation is not causation" is at play here -
do they get the damage through playing, or do people with that specific sort of brain damage are especially apt at Football?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The rest of the time it's HornWumpus.
Yes, but it doesn't give accurate percentages of those affected.
That's kind of an academic point of interest. Once they develop an in-situ test on a live brain then we'll get accurate counts of percent of players affected but that's not particularly important data. The important fact is that playing american football unambiguously and substantially increases the risk of CTE particularly among professionals. The exact percentage of affected players is academically interesting but not clinically important to those affected. The important fact is that the rate of affected patients is substantially higher than in the general population. The only people that might care about the exact percentages are probably lawyers.
Near 100% in those donating their body to science, but that might account for only a small percentage of those involved in the sport (also, what about other sports with high-speed impact, such as hockey)
What about them? It's already known that hockey players get CTE as well and similarly the exact percentages aren't the important fact. Again, whether most football players or just some have CTE the important fact is that substantial percentages of these athletes (well above the general population) are affected. The cause of their injury is no more a mystery than the cause of a torn ACL.
Our county banned all full contact sports in K-12 starting this fall citing the risk of CTE and other serious injuries to young and still-maturing brains. No more football, lacrosse, hockey, wrestling, or martial arts.
I don't mean to be rude. I just think that the self-selection bias of this study implies that we should look further into the amount of additionality that this sport brings in for CTE, and be more skeptic about the nature of the causation link.
I had a few Creimer Traumatic Experiences, and let me tell you, the dry cleaning bills are no joke!
Tell me again who is smarter?
That having a lifestyle that almost every day, you have anywhere from a quarter ton to half a ton of people slamming into you at maybe 10 mph, and knocking you to the ground, over, and over, and over, could *possibly* cause damage?
How many broken bones? How many smashing shocks to your head a day?
I read a long time ago that the *average* NFL player,, not the superstars, retire after six years with the body of a 59 yr old.
It's not a sport. It's something suitable for blood sports in the Colliseum.
How many NFL players played sandlot, or street football when younger, without wearing any helmets? I can't think of a single person I know who used a helmet every time they played football when not in an organized setting.
So maybe it has nothing to do with the NFL, but with extracurricular activities. Heck, a friend had a kid who used to bash his head into walls in his house. The kid grew up to become a good football player. Don't blame his head damage on football.
Assuming these sports don't go away completely (and they probably won't) it is incredibly useful to be able to see what difference rules changes, adjustments to protective gear, better treatment protocols, etc., will have on the players.
You don't need to wait for players to die for that. Concussions are a pretty good proxy for future cases of CTE and we can diagnose those today. And we already know for a fact that football helmets are rather useless in preventing concussions. They keep the skull intact but they do little to prevent your gelatinous brain from sloshing around inside your head during an impact. Frankly I don't see any way to reduce the incidence of CTE in football players without substantial revisions to the rules which probably will not happen in my lifetime.
While I fully believe that football does lead to increased brain trauma (as a football player myself), let's keep note that:
- the 'donated' brains were almost all donated specifically because they'd exhibited issues which led people to suspect such trauma.
- even the cross-sport study again seems to have been on subjects which exhibited symptoms that would suggest brain trauma.
At this point I haven't seen a cross section of people who DIDN'T exhibit such symptoms; certainly it's possible that *any* people that played athletics intensively in pretty nearly any sport from basketball to soccer to racquetball may also exhibit such trauma even though they don't outwardly display symptoms. I believe it's absolutely likely that ongoing football participation makes such trauma more likely and more likely to be severe, certainly, but it's also possible that most reasonably-athletic-at-one-time adults also have some small levels.
-Styopa
http://www.smbc-comics.com/ind...
Donated brains from those who were known to have problems leads to biased results.