Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is common in athletes, study shows its onset is linked to age of football initiation
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative disease of the nervous system common in athletes. New research suggests that kids who play tackle football before age 12 could start showing early signs of CTE.
The findings, from researchers at VA Boston Healthcare System (VABHS) and Boston University (BU) School of Medicine, were published in the journal Annals Of Neurology. Among 211 football players who were diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease CTE after death, it was found that those who began tackle football before age 12 had an earlier onset of cognitive, behavior, and mood symptoms. The symptoms appeared by an average of 13 years earlier.
“Youth exposure to repetitive head impacts in tackle football may reduce one’s resiliency to brain diseases later in life…”
For every one year earlier that kids began to play tackle football, the cognitive problems occurred 2.4 years earlier. The study included 246 deceased football players who were part of the UNITE (Understanding Neurologic Injury and Traumatic Encephalopathy) study. They had donated their brains for neuropathological examination to the VA-BU-CLF (Concussion Legacy Foundation) Brain Bank.
Of those 246, 211 were diagnosed with CTE (with several having evidence of additional brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s). Of the 211 with CTE, 76 were amateur football players and 135 played at the professional level.
“Youth exposure to repetitive head impacts in tackle football may reduce one’s resiliency to brain diseases later in life, including, but not limited to CTE,” said corresponding author Ann McKee, MD, chief of Neuropathology at Boston VA Healthcare System, and Director of BU’s CTE Center. “It makes common sense that children, whose brains are rapidly developing, should not be hitting their heads hundreds of times per season.”
Interestingly, though the age of initiation of football was linked to the age of onset of symptoms, it was not linked to the severity of the symptoms.
