The heightened risk of CTE in football players

By Julia Bevilacqua, 2024 

Published 11/30/2023

CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a brain trauma that can be deadly. This condition is especially concerning for people who play contact sports, as the cause of CTE is repeated traumatic brain injuries. When these brain injuries occur, a protein called TAU builds up in the brain. The damage from this is what causes the CTE. But, what makes CTE so scary is it can be caused by non-concussive brain trauma. So, football players who get hit in the head hundreds of times each season can develop CTE and not even know the severity of their potential illness. The symptoms of CTE are very similar to those found in Alzheimer's, with CTE leading to dementia and in some cases, death. Scientist around the world has been researching the potential causes of CTE and what kind of head trauma cause this disease. 

One Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University team researched a group of 631 men who played football. First, they measured the kind of hits the football players were taking, the force of the hits, the location, and the number of hits each player took a season were all factors. When analyzing this relationship the researchers found that on average, men who played football for twelve years died at around the age of 60. 180 of these men had no signs of CTE in their brains, while another 163 had low-stage CTE. A whopping 288 men had high-stage CTE, and the number of concussions these men had in their lifetimes did not correlate with the severity of their condition by the end of their lives. All of this data held when taking into account the head trauma the men may have received at other times in their lives, whether it be during military service or participation in other contact sports. In addition to this data, the number of years playing football was also considered. The researchers concluded that every additional year playing football correlated with a 15 percent increase in the risk of developing CTE. For those who were diagnosed, every additional year meant a 14 percent increase in the odds of the severity of their condition worsening. The researchers estimated that for every 1,000 blows to the head, the chance of developing CTE increased by 21 percent, and the severity worsened by 13 percent. 

This study was published in June of 2023 by Nature Communications, and the researchers have found valuable information that will help protect players by changing the way they practice and compete with one another. This new data will help further the goal of preventing this detrimental disease in any more ex-football players.