The CardBoard
OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE (/thread-13990.html)

Pages: 1 2

OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - 2006alum - 07-27-2017

A frightening new study found that 48 out of 53 football players who played in high school and college but not pro football had CTE. It was also found in 110 out of 111 pro players. There's question of sampling bias because the parents of the players presumably had reason to suspect there was an issue in choosing to donate their brains, but still.

I wonder how universities will react to this? It's pretty hard to justify offering up scholarships for students to inflict serious chronic and debilitating conditions on themselves. You might make the argument that pro players know the risks and the NFL can provide treatment down the road, but are universities prepared to pony up for long-term treatment costs? If not, and there's even a 20% chance someone taking a university scholarship to play football will end up with CTE, is the university not abrogating its duty to care for its students? A lot of students are 17 when they sign letters of intent, etc. They wouldn't even be legally able to waive liability for their participation. I say this as someone who is a big college football fan but is having an increasingly hard time explaining away why this isn't (and shouldn't) be an existential issue for the sport.

Incidentally, apparently the study was the reason John Urschel, the math guru on the Ravens, chose to retire the other day.

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - stupac2 - 07-27-2017

IIRC there's at least one neurologist on here, I'd like to see their take(s). My understanding is that these studies have so much selection bias that it's hard to know what to make of them, but it's possible that as the numbers pile up that's changing.

It's also worth noting that those guys didn't play today's game, football is a lot different now, even compared with the 90's.

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - oldalum - 07-27-2017

absolutely not a representative sample, but I don't care if the true prevalence is as low as 1%, that would be unacceptably high IMO.  I also don't think this is "OT"  :) this is critical to college football in general and to the health of our student athletes specifically!

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - OutsiderFan - 07-27-2017

Have we seen results of brain samples from former players who showed no signs of mental degradation before death?  What about those who play other sports, like soccer and hockey?  And have we seen samples from people who never played any contact sports? 

I know I have had at least three concussions in my life just from falls and spills, including taking a knee to my head playing volleyball that landed me in the ER.  Played football a couple years in high school, and may have suffered some head trauma, but I was never diagnosed with or feel I had a concussion.  When you have one, you know it.

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - needle - 07-27-2017

Quote: I know I have had at least three concussions in my life just from falls and spills, including taking a knee to my head playing volleyball that landed me in the ER.  Played football a couple years in high school, and may have suffered some head trauma, but I was never diagnosed with or feel I had a concussion.  When you have one, you know it.

As I understand it, it's very unclear whether sub-concussive impacts (so, hits to the head *not* resulting in a concussion) result in CTE. So, one question I have about these studies is if the specimens were from people who say they had concussions or people who say they played but did not have any concussions.

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - BostonCard - 07-27-2017

Not unrelatedly to the study results, Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel retired from football:

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20170808/baltimore-ravens-offensive-lineman-john-urschel-retires-abruptly

Urschel, as you might recall, is getting his mathematics PhD at MIT.  You can't blame him for making a 30-year decision.

BC

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - fullmetal - 07-27-2017

I found this quote interesting from BC's ESPN article:

Quote:The danger of damaging his brain is something Urschel has already experienced. In August 2015, he suffered a concussion when he went helmet-to-helmet with another player and was knocked unconscious.

"I think it hurt my ability to think well mathematically," Urschel said. "It took me about three weeks before I was football-ready. It took me a little bit longer before my high-level visualizations ability came back."

I wish Stanford had gotten him--maybe Stanford can hire him.

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - TreesAndBirds - 07-27-2017

And a recent article on Joe Kapp, his alzheimer's and the suspected connection with his playing career (although much of the article is on his Hispanic experience).

http://www.espn.com/blog/onenacion/post/_/id/7722/the-struggles-and-triumphs-of-joe-kapp

And re Urschel, most people thought he would start this year, so he was not retiring because of a lack of career prospects.

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - OutsiderFan - 07-27-2017

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/news/brian-price-video-glass-door-cte-nfl-ucla-stats/1hirr651vtyko1vaporntj9cb5

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - Farm93 - 07-27-2017

The inability to assess the impact until death will make this one hard.  The need to study the actual brain will only compound the research challenges.  Selection bias, time, research complexity and cost will all be in the mix.

Hard to ignore the trends in the existing empirical evidence.  The only former athletes I have heard that struggle with speech and thought as consistently as old retired NFL players are former boxers.  For example, trying to decipher what Mike Tyson is trying to communicate these days is close to impossible.

As a parent it would be hard for me to encourage my kids to play football.  Can't help but wonder what impact that will have on the sport over the next 20 years or so.  Already my childrens' HS has a no cut policy for football.  Want to play?  Varsity football for you!  That same school has cuts for almost every other sport (water polo, soccer, cross country, swimming, baseball, softball, etc.).

Not hard for me to imagine a future time when Stanford simply can't field a competitive team because the offspring of parents that care about education and academic performance will not want their kids near the sport.

For now I can only guess that a few other sports will uncover high rates of CTE too.  MMA, boxing, hockey, lacrosse and soccer all are known to expose athletes to head blows and/or concussions.

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - BostonCard - 07-27-2017

(07-27-2017, 09:44 AM)oldalum link Wrote:absolutely not a representative sample, but I don't care if the true prevalence is as low as 1%, that would be unacceptably high IMO.  I also don't think this is "OT"  :) this is critical to college football in general and to the health of our student athletes specifically!

Yes, exactly.  While not a representative sample by any means, the denominator of all people who have played NFL football is not that large.  That 100+ NFL players all had evidence of CTE in their brains means that even if zero of the former NFL players who did not donate their brains would have had evidence of CTE, that's still a substantial numerator.

Of course pathological evidence of CTE doesn't necessarily mean it was symptomatic/clinically significant, though, as noted most of the players who donated had some sort of symptoms (though those may or may not have had anything to do with CTE).

BC

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - OutsiderFan - 07-27-2017

Aside from cause-effect issues, do we know if signs of CTE necessarily portend debilitating mental decline?  I mean maybe I have CTE markers from my concussions, but won't ever suffer from dementia or other associated brain maladies, while others with the same markers, will.

And all these football players who had their brains studied, how many of them were experiencing symptoms of mental degradation? 

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - dabigv13 - 07-27-2017

At this point, I think epidemiologic studies will be far more valuable than these sorts of pathologic studies we always read about.

What meaning do these pathologic changes have clinically? That's still not clear.

What I want to know is how many former NFL players have neurologic or psychiatric diagnoses? How many former college or HS football players compared to the general populace? It would be a pretty ambitious study but far from impossible, and would far more illuminating.

It's just ridiculous on it's face to think that 90+% of former HS and college players suffer neurologic or psychiatric sequelae.

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - Farm93 - 07-27-2017

(07-27-2017, 02:19 PM)OutsiderFan link Wrote:Aside from cause-effect issues, do we know if signs of CTE necessarily portend debilitating mental decline?  I mean maybe I have CTE markers from my concussions, but won't ever suffer from dementia or other associated brain maladies, while others with the same markers, will.

And all these football players who had their brains studied, how many of them were experiencing symptoms of mental degradation?

In other summaries of this report I saw assessments of the different sub-groups.  Therefore, I believe the researchers went into some of those details related to time in the game and severity of symptoms.  Obviously, it is far from a randomized, prospective trial, but pretty compelling since the observed correlations seem to fit a logical theory.

CTE is a new risk to add to the assessment.  For some players the newly identified risk will now overwhelm the potential rewards.

Neurological issues are always hard to assess.  Still, football is far from a necessity in life.  OK, maybe far from a necessity outside of Texas and the SEC.  Why bother to take this additional risk if one is a marginal football player?

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - stupac2 - 07-27-2017

(07-27-2017, 02:31 PM)dabigv link Wrote:At this point, I think epidemiologic studies will be far more valuable than these sorts of pathologic studies we always read about.

What meaning do these pathologic changes have clinically? That's still not clear.

That's something I've been curious about, when they've shown pictures of the autopsied brains, they're very clearly different from healthy brains, including in size. Why isn't that visible on an MRI or some other scan? Is something about those pictures misleading?

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - johnnyo53 - 07-27-2017

(07-27-2017, 02:02 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:[quote author=oldalum link=topic=17092.msg196075#msg196075 date=1501173897]
absolutely not a representative sample, but I don't care if the true prevalence is as low as 1%, that would be unacceptably high IMO.  I also don't think this is "OT"  :) this is critical to college football in general and to the health of our student athletes specifically!

Yes, exactly.  While not a representative sample by any means, the denominator of all people who have played NFL football is not that large.  That 100+ NFL players all had evidence of CTE in their brains means that even if zero of the former NFL players who did not donate their brains would have had evidence of CTE, that's still a substantial numerator.


THERE ARE MANY PROBLEMS IN ASSESSING THE BASELINE INCIDENCE OF CTE IN THE GENPOP AS ONE OF THE DOCTORS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE RESEARCH TOLD ME, AND SHE ADMITTED IT HADN'T EVEN BEEN STUDIED ON A LARGE SCALE.  ADDITIONALLY, HOW ARE WE TO REALLY KNOW HOW MANY OF THE PROBLEMS STARTED EARLIER THAN EVEN COLLEGE PARTICIPATION?  OR WHAT THE COMBINATION OF RISK FACTORS  MAY CONTRIBUTE TO ACCELERATING OR MULTIPLYING THE PHYSIOLOGICAL CHANGES THAT OCCUR IN CTE?  JIM MCMAHON IS AN EXAMPLE OF A GUY WHO HAD CONCUSSIVE HISTORY, BUT HE ALSO "SELF MEDICATED" WITH A LARGE VARIETY OF SUBSTANCES. 
Of course pathological evidence of CTE doesn't necessarily mean it was symptomatic/clinically significant, though, as noted most of the players who donated had some sort of symptoms (though those may or may not have had anything to do with CTE).

BC
[/quote]

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - BostonCard - 07-27-2017

I agree on all counts.  In an ideal study, you would want to compare a random sampling of exposed (football players') brains to non-exposed (non-football players' brains), but even then it wouldn't be perfect because it wouldn't account for the possibility that football players might be more likely to engage in behavior (e.g. Tonga Juice drinking) than non-football players.  You would also ideally like to show a dose-response (playing more football increased your likelihood of having CTE).  Finally, you would want clinical correlates to the pathological findings.

Establishing causation in the absence of a randomized placebo-controlled study is tricky.

BC

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - johnnyo53 - 07-27-2017

I THINK IT IS SAFE TO ASSUME THERE IS A DIRECT CORRELATION BETWEEN ATTRACTION TO AND CONSUMPTION OF TONGA JUICE AND PATHOLOGICAL TENDENCIES IF NOT BEHAVIORS.  IT'S BEEN BEEN STUDIED EXTENSIVELY IN CTG.  CTG-CTE IS KNOWN TO BE A SEASONAL ABERRATION.


Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - Mick - 07-27-2017

I was talking with a friendly acquaintance of mine a few days ago and I asked him if he followed any football teams, college or pro.  He grimaced and shook his head and said, "not with what I now know about CTE and what football does to your head."

Really?  What we know now???

I started playing flag football in 7th grade, got kneed in the head and saw stars.  A player dove at my knees, I flipped, saw stars when I landed on my head.  Started tackle football in high school as a 13 year old.  We didn't have a frosh team, so I played JV, broke my arm.  Saw tons of instances where guys saw stars. 

My senior year, we had a sadistic coach who played football at Humboldt State.  He later went to work for SJ Unified School District where he was nicknamed after a Star Wars villain.  He had any number of injury causing drills (and the obligatory no-water-during-two-a-days-in-August).  He liked to have us in full pads all week, and wanted the wide receivers standing on opposite 40 yard lines, kitty corner from each other.  He'd yell "Hike" and the two WRs would run a 10 yard down-and-in...essentially both WRs made the cut on the 50 yard line and ran directly at each other...not seeing each other because the QB had to deliver the ball.  One day I caught the ball and ran head on into the toughest guy on our team.  But my pass was way over my head, I went up for it, caught it, my knee was extended and caught our tough guy right on the  helmet.  He started throwing up, and couldn't really stand the rest of practice. That was on a Thursday.  He played both ways on the Friday game the next day.

Separately, Mrs. Mick's best friend from high school dated a former 49er for about five years.  He'd played over 100 games on the defensive line.  I couldn't understand the guy's speech...at all.

I could give you fifty similar examples, as I'm sure the other former HS or college players on this board could.  I find it simply stunning that so many people are just now coming to the conclusion that football is bad for your brain.  Jeez

Re: OT: 48 of 53 college football players' donated brains had CTE - johnnyo53 - 07-27-2017

WE ALL KNEW IT COULD RUIN YOU.  WE ALL KNEW IT WASN'T GOOD FOR YOU.  WE ALL KNEW IT WAS SIMILAR TO WHAT HAPPENED TO BOXERS. MANY OF US PLAYED ANYWAY.  I'M WITH MARK SCHLERETH AMONG OTHERS, WHO FEEL THERE'S A NEED TO HELP GUYS OUT, BUT THERE ARE A LOT OF FREE LOADERS AND NOT ENOUGH PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY BEING DEMONSTRATED THESE DAYS.  A CASE IN POINT IS HOW ONE SETTLEMENT WAS DERAILED WHEN A GUY WHO NEVER EVEN PLAYED IN A REGULAR SEASON GAME, WAS A PRACTICE SQUAD PLAYER, BLEW UP A COURT CASE AND FURTHER DELAYED HELP TO GUYS WHO REALLY NEED IT...