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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.
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.
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Correlation does not imply causation.
Is the implication that playing football causes brain damage, or that having brain damage causes playing football?
As a lifelong nerd, I've often suspected both are likely, but I suppose you're right that we need to study this more before declaring "I knew it!"
"Oh no... he found the
Every single concussion comes with an extent of brain damaged aligned to the severity of the concussion, every single one https://www.brainline.org/arti.... The more concussions you suffer and the worse they are, the greater your accumulated brain damage. The reason you are concussed is because, yes you brain suffered sufficient impact to cause it harm, that is why you feel concussed. It's like never damaged, bruised nerves, means in those millions of nerve bundles some where broken, severed, ceased to function, resulting in diminished capacity, as for the brain. As different parts of the brain do different things, the direction of the impact has a significant impact on the outcome, some being much more dangerous than others. What probably saves jock straps from more behaviourally visible reduce cerebral function is smaller brains in thicker skulls, with fewer neuron connections and the types of activity they indulge in, not much mental function is required for the activity, in fact reduced mental function is desirable for repetitive training behaviours.
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The BBC version of this story actually discusses the sample bias, and the director of the CTE center is quoted fully acknowledging that there's enormous bias.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
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The media understand it here - they literally used the term self-selection bias on the news this evening. Then again, Canadian news tends to cater to a more literate crowd, not those with an attention span of 140 characters.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
Oh my lord, I think you just nailed all that is wrong with America in that one statement.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
Except the brain damage doesn't start after you sign the contract. It starts just after your dad tells you 'tough kids play football' and you suddenly find yourself on the other side of the scrimmage line from all the freakishly huge kids from the other side of town. Parents are basically volunteering their kids for this in order for their kid to have a change at the big time. That's an awful big risk.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
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The methods section (emphasis mine)
Study Recruitment In 2008, as a collaboration among the VA Boston Healthcare System, Bedford VA, Boston University (BU) School of Medicine, and Sports Legacy Institute (now the Concussion Legacy Foundation [CLF]), a brain bank was created to better understand the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma experienced through contact sport participation and military-related exposure. The purpose of the brain bank was to comprehensively examine the neuropathology and clinical presentation of brain donors considered at risk of development of CTE. The institutional review board at Boston University Medical Campus approved all research activities. The next of kin or legally authorized representative of each brain donor provided written informed consent. No stipend for participation was provided. Inclusion criteria were based entirely on exposure to repetitive head trauma (eg, contact sports, military service, or domestic violence), regardless of whether symptoms manifested during life. Playing American football was sufficient for inclusion. Because of limited resources, more strict inclusion criteria were implemented in 2014 and required that football players who died after age 35 years have at least 2 years of college-level play. Donors were excluded if postmortem interval exceeded 72 hours or if fixed tissue fragments representing less than half the total brain volume were received (eFigure in the Supplement).
It sounds like they selected from donated cadavers for people who had played football. This is quite different from football players who suspected they had brain damage from football donating their brains. There would still be bias, as families who were convinced their loved ones were suffering from brain damage would be more likely to say yes to being in the study. But that's likely NOT NEARLY as big a bias as what GP is suggesting.
The problem with CTE is it's cumulative. The more trauma, the more damage. Some of the more aggressive players have unfortunately succumbed with devastating results. Basically, who was once a family man suddenly has behavioral changes which include sudden outbursts of anger and violence that are unprovoked. Who if they weren't football players, we may have normally had jailed or committed.
Some are even suicidal, which is a shame because most take a bullet to the head, which destroys any evidence. (Some do have enough presence of mind left to avoid damaging the head and thus allowing researchers to diagnose CTE).
The only reason for doubt is because the NFL is rather self-interested in not promoting tackle football causes CTE. Two reasons. First, they are worried - yes, scared sh*tless - that if the association is made, parents will withdraw their kids from football programs. This may lead to lowered interest in football, which means the millions of dollars it brings in could dry up.
The second reason is the players associations - they have successfully sued the NFL over hiding or discounting the medical issue which is more than career ending, it's life changing.
Before CTE was even discovered, it was thought brain damage happened as a result of a major event - it was thought the brain could handle getting hit and recover, when instead it recovers irregularly. CTE is the result of repeated minor brain damage caused by the brain banging against the skull causing scarring and bruising, and which builds up over time.
The sports associations are heavily into discounting CTE because it really affects their bottom lines. It's also why there's a ton of research going into smart helmets that can indicate when a potentially damaging event occurs, and why at least at the college level and below, the threshold for benching someone has gone from knockout or concussion to a blow that exceeds 75Gs or so, even if the player is still conscious and lucid. And after a concussion, the bench time has a fixed minimum - no longer you wake up and you're in the next game, it's minimum 4-6 weeks benched, and only the doctor can clear you. Heck, some teams have even banned tackling during practice to avoid causing more damage than necessary.
The link between football (and other contact heavy sports) and CTE has been long proven. There are many well regarded papers behind it. The only question left is what percentage of the football playing population has CTE.
And finally, this is a VERY recent discovery. Bennet Omalu discovered this in 2002, and the NFL reluctantly acknowledged CTE's existence in 2009, after 7 years of trying to discredit Omalu. It's just like leaded gas, cigarettes, CFCs, and global warming all over again.