A new study has taken a closer look at the impact of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE, on players in the National Football League. Researchers at Boston University examined 33 athletes who had been diagnosed with the condition through an autopsy, building a detailed picture of the symptoms those players experienced during their lives before they died.
According to the findings, more than 60 percent of the athletes studied reported memory problems before their deaths. That makes memory loss one of the most common difficulties identified among the group, underscoring how deeply the condition can affect the everyday lives of those who develop it after years of playing the sport at the professional level.
The research also found that more than half of the players had issues with executive function. That term covers a range of mental abilities, including a person's capacity to control their inhibitions, to plan ahead and to handle several tasks at once. Problems in this area can make it much harder for someone to manage the routine demands of daily life.
Beyond memory and executive function, the study documented other cognitive difficulties among the former players. Roughly a quarter of them had problems with attention, while a number of the athletes also experienced difficulties with language. Together, these findings point to a broad pattern of impairment stretching across several different mental functions.
To build this picture of symptoms, the players and their families filled out assessments designed to identify the range of difficulties each athlete had faced. That approach allowed researchers to pair the medical findings from the autopsies with detailed accounts of how the condition had shown up in the players' behaviour and daily functioning while they were still alive.
One of the central challenges with CTE is that it can only be diagnosed after death. Because the condition is confirmed only once a patient has died, doctors are not yet able to give a definitive diagnosis to someone who is still living. That limitation is part of what makes studies of former players who have died so valuable to researchers trying to understand the disease.
The study also noted that the average age of death for players found to have CTE was 65. The findings come just days after a separate study estimated that as many as one in four players may have the condition, adding to a growing body of research that continues to examine the long-term effects of the sport on the brains of those who play it.