Brain Damage and Football Players
Football And Progressive Brain Damage: Tom McHale Of NFL Suffered From Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy When He Died In 2008
How dangerous is football? Lisa McHale, widow of Tom McHale, said, "What's even more disturbing to me, and the reason I am here, is that Tom is not alone. His is now the sixth confirmed case of CTE among former professional football players. Bearing in mind that only six former players, over the age of 25, have been tested for CTE, I find these results to be not only incredibly significant, but profoundly disturbing. And I just can't conceive of anyone thinking otherwise. I have 9 and 11-year-old boys who are just beginning to play Pop Warner football. In light of Tom's situation and the findings on the high school football player with the initial evidence of CTE, I now question their involvement in a sport that had been so important in our lives."
ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2009) Leading medical experts at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE) at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) reported today that nine-year NFL veteran, former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Tom McHale was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by head trauma, when he died in 2008 at the age of 45.
In addition, the CSTE has discovered early evidence of CTE in the youngest case to date, a recently deceased 18-year-old boy who suffered multiple concussions in high school football.
McHale, a Cornell University graduate, former restaurateur, husband and father of three boys, is the sixth former NFL player to be diagnosed post-mortem with CTE since 2002. CTE, a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by repetitive trauma to the brain, is characterized by the build-up of a toxic protein called tau in the form of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) and neuropil threads (NTs) throughout the brain. The abnormal protein initially impairs the normal functioning of the brain and eventually kills brain cells. Early on, CTE sufferers may display clinical symptoms such as memory impairment, emotional instability, erratic behavior, depression and problems with impulse control. However, CTE eventually progresses to full-blown dementia. McHale died due to a drug overdose after a multi-year battle with addiction. Expert consensus is that drug abuse of any kind would never cause the neuropathological findings of CTE seen in McHale.
The other former NFL players diagnosed with CTE are former Pittsburgh Steelers Mike Webster, Terry Long and Justin Strzelczyk, along with Andre Waters and John Grimsley. Waters and Long committed suicide. Grimsley, an avid and experienced gunsman, died in 2008 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound that the medical examiner ruled as accidental. All six NFL CTE sufferers died by the age of 50. Damien Nash, who died in 2007 at the age of 24, is the only former NFL player to be examined neuropathologically and not have CTE. Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the non-profit Sports Legacy Institute (SLI), explained, "This means that six of six deceased former NFL players between the ages of 25 and 50 have had severe brain damage that, if they had lived, would have developed into debilitating dementia."
According to Ann McKee, MD, CSTE co-director and a leading neuropathologist who specializes in degenerative brain diseases, "CTE has been described for approximately 80 years. Initially referred to as dementia pugilistica because of the boxers that were originally studied, CTE is now being seen in other athletes. Although the neuropathological findings of CTE are, in some ways, similar to those we see in Alzheimer's disease, they represent a distinct disease with a distinct cause, namely repetitive head trauma." McKee conducted the neuropathological analysis on the brains of both Grimsley and McHale. Her findings of significant CTE in their brains were independently confirmed by E. Tessa Hedley-Whyte, MD, professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and a neuropathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Football And Progressive Brain Damage: Tom McHale Of NFL Suffered From Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy When He Died In 2008
