Nearly all former NFL players in BU study diagnosed with CTE
The director of Boston University's CTE Center says nearly 92 percent of the 376 players in the bank were diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease.
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BOSTON —
The vast majority of the nearly 400 former NFL players who are part of a Boston University study have been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, more commonly known as CTE.
CTE is a degenerative brain disease that can cause memory loss, personality changes and erratic behavior, and the top risk factor appears to be repetitive hits to the head.
"We have 376 NFL players in the bank and we found CTE in 345, roughly 91.7 percent of them," said Dr. Ann McKee, director of the Boston University CTE Center. "To me, this is an unacceptably high risk and it cries out for something to be done."
BU researchers said they do not know how the rate they found in their study compares to the rate of CTE in all current and former NFL players, but the rate is significantly higher than the rate in other brain banks.
A 2018 study of brains donated to the Framingham Heart Study found only one out of 164 people had CTE, and the lone case was a former college football player.
