Researchers find CTE in brains of young athletes; Suggest prevention is possible
Study of 152 brains from donors who died before age 30 found 63 cases
Study of 152 brains from donors who died before age 30 found 63 cases
Study of 152 brains from donors who died before age 30 found 63 cases
New research conducted at Boston University studied the brains of 152 young athletes who died before age 30 and found that 41% had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the brain disorder most commonly associated with professional athletes.
The findings published Monday in also include the discovery of the first American woman soccer player, a 28-year-old, to be diagnosed with CTE.
"What's important to me about this is it can occur quite early. I can sometimes -- as shown in these individuals — it can sometimes start very early in amateur players," said Dr. Ann McKee, director of Boston University's CTE Center, where the research was conducted.
CTE cannot yet be diagnosed in living patients and all of the brains used in the study were donated by the families of the young athletes.
"Their loved ones made a brain donation happen because they were all symptomatic and they were all concerned," McKee explained.
Most of those who were diagnosed with CTE had mild stages of the disease but three had Stage 3 CTE. Brains with evidence of the disease also often had evidence of other brain injuries.
"Clinical symptoms were common among the athletes, whether or not they had CTE. Clinical symptoms included depression (70.0%), apathy (71.3%), difficulty controlling behaviors (56.8%), and problems with decision-making (54.5%). Substance abuse also was frequent, with alcohol abuse present in 42.9% and drug abuse in 38.3%," researchers wrote in a summary of their results.
"Just because you have symptoms doesn't automatically, you know, it doesn't mean you have CTE. It's very likely you don't. And we could we can help you with some of these symptoms," said McKee. "But then the second part of this is it can sometimes, as shown in these individuals, it can sometimes start very early in amateur players."
Video below: More from Dr. McKee
McKee said she hopes the results of this research encourage parents, athletes and coaches to adopt policies that keep young players safer by reducing the number and magnitude of head impacts.
"I think it's imperative that we start to get very serious about eliminating what we call head impacts in these sports," McKee said. "In football, it's drills that don't involve head contacted styles of of tackling. It's the number of practices, it's the number of games. It's when you start the sport. If you start later, you're just going to have less exposure. In hockey, it's things like checking and unnecessary violence in the sport. In soccer, it's the heading, we could eliminate the heading."
