Study suggests at least 25 percent of NFL players get CTE

A Tuesday report found that at least 25 percent of deceased NFL players who were studied suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in their lives. A team of researchers published a report in the British Medical Journal analyzing the brains of former NFL players who died between 2008 and 2021. Over the last six years of the study, researchers received 235 brains of the 878 NFL players who died. In that sample, 215 brains — 24.5 percent — were diagnosed with CTE. They estimated the prevalence of the disease could be far higher in those years as researchers were unable to analyze the other 643 brains that were not donated. “The possible prevalence at death [of CTE] during 2016 to 2021, when brain donation was most frequent, ranged between 24.5 percent and 97.7 percent,” they wrote. The study also noted that late-stage CTE is more prevalent in donors with dementia as research continues to trace the exact causes of the disease. Another 2017 study in the Journal of American Medical Association reported similar results in the brains of 111 deceased NFL players; all but one were found to have CTE in the study. The Mayo Clinic calls CTE a brain disease that can likely be caused by repeated head trauma and can cause emotional distress, mood swings and impact an individual’s behavior. The only way to be diagnosed with the disease is posthumously during a brain autopsy. It outlined that CTE “appears to be related to repeated head injuries, often occurring in contact sports or …