87 Deceased Football Players Test Positive for Brain Disease

In a recent study 87 out of 91 former NFL players test positive for brain disease. "Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have now identified the degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in 96 percent of NFL players that they’ve examined and in 79 percent of all football players." Another eye opening statistic is the CTE lab found that 131 of 165 inviduals tested for CTE previously played football either professionally or in college. 40% of those who tested postive were offensive or defensive linemen. ​

In a previous blog post I mention this disease. CTE is the base for the Will Smith movie Concussion. The disease is widely believed to stem from repetitive trauma to the head, and can lead to conditions such as memory loss, depression and dementia. Football has the largest number of athletes who suffer from this disease with boxing coming in as a close second. These two sports share a common factor, repeated head trama. Everyone jumps out of thier seats when there is a huge tackle or sack, but when the body takes massive hits like that it can wear on the athelte. In another blog there is a video that is created to show how hard and how fast concussions happen.

The National Football League continues to look for avenues to create a safer game, they give tons of funding to Boston Universtiy so they can continue to study this deadly disease.