A few years ago, the NFL was the epicenter of a scandal surrounding the long-term repercussions suffered by players once they retired, which deepened the study and the relationship between the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE for its acronym in English), and sports in contact, which has been extended to other disciplines.
According to a new study conducted by the boston university, based on the study done in the brain of 152 athletes who died before the age of 30, up to 41 percent suffered some indicator of CTE, caused by impacts to the head. The most alarming is the fact that 92 examinees practiced American football.
CTE, the latent risk of sports life
“The fact that more than 40 percent of young contact and collision sports athletes in the UNITE brain bank have CTE is remarkable, considering that studies of community brain banks show that less than one percent of the general population has CTE”, considered doctor Ann McKeelead author of the study and director of the BU CTE Center.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Neurologyincludes the results of the first female soccer player in the United States diagnosed with CTE. It should be remembered that the diagnosis cannot yet be made in living people, while the brains used were donated by relatives.
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scary facts
While most of the results came with mild symptoms of the disease, three of them showed an advanced stage of CTE, as well as evidence of some other brain condition or injury.
“Clinical symptoms were common among athletes, whether or not they had CTE. Clinical symptoms included depression (70.0%), apathy (71.3%), difficulty controlling behaviors (56.8%), and decision-making problems (54.5%). Substance abuse was also common, with alcohol abuse present in 42.9% and drug abuse in 38.3%,” the results explain.
The mean age of the deceased examined was set at 22.97 years, with a confirmed diagnosis of CTE in 63, 60 of them in early stages. Of those examined, 45 were men who practiced amateur sports, in addition to the female soccer player, with an existing correlation between the degree of damage and the years they practiced the sport.
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2023-08-28 23:18:51
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