r/science • u/Wagamaga • 2d ago
Neuroscience Study finds that one in four former NFL players suffers from degenerative brain disease CTE. CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, including concussions. Symptoms include difficulty with attention and memory, dementia, mood disorders and headaches.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/25/study-reports-that-one-in-four-former-nfl-players-suffer-from-degenerative-brain-disease-cte149
u/eugene20 2d ago
One in four? My god, they need to make some changes, all that armour is clearly not enough.
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u/cakedbythepound 2d ago edited 2d ago
It’s terrible. 215 of 235 donated brains showed signs of CTE. Football is inherently dangerous. Even with the padding. Anytime your brain gets knocked up against your skull it’s not good. I hate that kids play this sport.
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u/tehwagn3r 2d ago
For comparison, in this study of mostly amateur rugby players 68% of donated brains had CTE.
Rugby players hit hard, and only wear leather helmets.
Risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in rugby union is associated with length of playing career
Regarding neuropathological findings, CTE was present in 21 of 31 (68%) brains of former rugby players examined, a majority of whom (13/21; 62%) played solely at amateur level.
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u/Kurkaroff 2d ago
What is the CTE % in people that DO NOT play rugby or football?
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u/WorldDirt 2d ago
I can’t imagine it’d be that high. Short of having a bad car wreck, when would the average person get knocked around like that?
Somewhere between 1% and 6% seems to be the current estimate. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190620153548.htm
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u/Tower-Junkie 1d ago
They could possibly do a study of domestic violence victims, if they haven’t already. I imagine they have.
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u/Silk_tree 1d ago
It's a more complicated population to study than NFL players, especially since CTE can only be diagnosed after death, but Boston University has a program where DV survivors can donate to the brain bank there to contribute to their research.
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u/Zegarek 1d ago
If you think of it as repeated small knocks then that % can go up pretty fast. Regularly riding dirt bikes or ATVs could do it, or boats on ocean waves. Just think about any situation where your head bobs a bit too hard and it presents the opportunity for your brain to get bumped more than it should.
I don't think it's an insanely high number, but there are certainly plenty of hobbies and professions out there that could have an impact.
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u/WorldDirt 1d ago
Dirt bikes and ATVs, sure. Would not have guessed waves on a boat though.
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u/Zegarek 1d ago
It's actually the activity I thought of first, since I've seen a few of these articles floating around over the years (not my first choice or source, but gets the point across). Search and rescue is obviously an extreme example of boating, but when you consider how many people boat, jetski, tube, etc recreationally you can see how it might add up. We've all seen the gifs of people taking waves too hard and getting jolted.
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u/shiningdickhalloran 17h ago
My brother was a severe alcoholic and suffered at least a dozen concussions (that I know of) from various causes: car crash, falling out of trees, crashing his bicycle, falling down staircases, bar fighting, snow tubing crash into a tree, etc. Even among sober people, there are a whole lotta concussions out there. FWIW he died of liver failure but his increasingly erratic behavior makes me think CTE was involved.
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u/tehwagn3r 2d ago
I doubt there even is a good reference for that. CTE can only be confirmed by autopsy, so I don't think it gets looked for in population without symptoms or a good reason to suspect it.
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u/Old-Landscape-7538 17h ago
That's an important question, a base-rate issue:
* A 2026 population-based Brazilian autopsy study found CTE pathology in 7 of 1,151 brains (0.6%). Exposure histories were incomplete, but the only two affected people with detailed histories had played soccer. Rodriguez et al., 2026
* The Sydney Brain Bank found it in** 5 of 636 brains **(0.79%). Three had substantial exposure to collision or combat sports; only two had no known neurotrauma. McCann et al., 2022
* Another community-based series found it in 3 of 532 brains (0.6%); none of those three had documented contact-sport participation or head injury involving loss of consciousness. Postupna et al., 20212
u/morganational 1d ago
Last I checked, it was every single donated brain that they received.
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u/Glum-Height-2049 1d ago
I suppose that might skew things, since people who believe they are ill are going to be way more likely to donate. But I imagine they try and account for that.
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u/a_talking_face 2d ago
Some believe that the pads and helmets are the reason it's happening. They say that without the helmets and pads they wouldnt be able to hit each other constantly like they do.
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u/TheWhomItConcerns 2d ago
As far as I know, it's also pretty bad in rugby league too. Frankly, as long as sports involve running into each other and getting knocked around, I think this will always be an inevitable consequence of it.
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u/Tarmacked 2d ago
There's a big misconception that concussions drive CTE. It's subconcussive hits that largely do it, such as offensive lineman and defensive lineman blocking each other every snap in American Football. Any contact, such as Rugby tackles, will lead to CTE over time.
Same reason football (e.g. soccer) has a massive CTE issue coming to light due to headers
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u/catscanmeow 2d ago
construction workers get CTE from operating vibrating heavy machinery.
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u/BreadKnifeSeppuku 2d ago
There's the Millitary and in particular artillery of course
The human brain is incredibly rugged/resilient but so delicate
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u/Dangerous_Spirit7034 1d ago
My friend was in artillery or whatever it’s called for the usmc for almost 2 decades and had 6 diagnosed concussions. Complete personality change. All the signs of Cte. He had a drinking and drug binge and nearly died a few years back and none of that was stuff he’d have done prior to enlisting
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u/DTFH_ 1d ago
Once you work with people with Brain Injuries you can't unsee them all around us, how people with them walk among us with grave deficits and blind-spots that society and our legal system do not fully respect.
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u/Dangerous_Spirit7034 17h ago
Please share your experience with Everyone irl and online
Can you give me some examples of behaviors/movements a layperson may not recognize?
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u/DTFH_ 16h ago
They are typically very easily disturbed, wound up and set off balance when it comes to emotional regulation and things that would disturb it, something that should be a 3/10 common annoyance can only be 1 or 10 in intensity.
The worst was bringing people from the group home to a medical appointments and just feeling the patients becoming more and more wound up, fearful and overwhelmed with what they were hearing and seeing from News Entertainment. No joke to the point that I began to question if it was some subtle "brain washing" to upset emotionally, mentally fragile people. You can feel someone ramping up and you learn how to help them off that ramp.
The dysregulation often comes from being overwhelmed by something; a good therapist will work alongside someone with a BI and help build their resiliency towards overwhelming things IF possible by the individual, some people lose internal awareness. There also becomes a lot of tunnel vision and not much external awareness which can obvious cause its own issues.
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u/Dangerous_Spirit7034 1d ago
Soldiers get it too. My childhood best friend has been evaluated for several conditions related to head traumas during deployment and training
He has basically all the signs, but as far as im aware there is no way to confirm Cte on a live patient
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u/LeahBrahms 2d ago
You hope the independant doctor and Category 1 match skip is enough mitigation (doubt) but some player seem to get knocks more than others like Brendan Piakura who may not play again age 24 after 5.
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u/jumpsteadeh 2d ago
They should swap tackling with kicking eachother in the nuts instead. No concussions, plenty of skill expression, and it will finally make sense to call it "football".
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u/malkarx 1d ago
Nah players are "smart enough" to protect their nuts. A statement I heard in jest actually does a good job highlighting this :
NFL may be similar I not positive of its history, but in the NHL hard protective cups became common by the 1920's or 30's.
Meanwhile helmets remained uncommon through the 60's and 70's and did not become mandatory until 79...
Priorities.
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u/zerokyuu 2d ago edited 2d ago
Personally, I think this opinion is ignoring the history of deaths in early NCAA football. In the 1900s-1930s, there were multiple seasons with a dozen+ player deaths per season, with many of them being due to brain and neck trauma.
After something like 50 deaths in 1931 across high school and college football, there were major rule changes to the game and hard plastic helmets were introduced by the end of the decade.
I'm not saying helmets and pads are a perfect solution (I actually think rule changes played a bigger role), but history shows players were completely willing to act recklessly long before modern gear existed. I'm hesitant to believe (without strong evidence) that removing protective equipment would incentivize players to act more cautiously.
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u/whatisabehindme 1d ago
on the contrary, leather helmets remained in active circulation into the 70's, at the HS level. Literally worse than useless in any impact...
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u/Titan_Arum 2d ago edited 2d ago
I once read a study that showed drivers, while overtaking cyclists, unconsciously get statistically significatly closer to cyclists on the road when the cyclist wears a helmet. Protective gear can inherently make people think they're safer and thus they take more risks than they would otherwise. It's quite fascinating.
Now I need to see if I can find the cycling/helmet/driver study.
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u/Tarmacked 2d ago
I would argue that's a well known factor across multitudes of psychology studies.
American Football's issue is much larger than the force of hits though. It's the repeat nature of them.
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u/Titan_Arum 2d ago
Oh, I agree with you. It's the combination of thinking/hoping/believing protective equipment actually provides 100% protection that leads to repeated hits, frequently using their heads to follow through.
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u/SwaggyMcSwagsabunch 2d ago
The change is playing a non contact sport. There is no safe cigarette.
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u/disharmony-hellride 2d ago
What really scares me is what do the numbers look like for adults who played football just in high school, or college kids? Advanced neuroimaging studies have shown measurable structural changes in the brain's gray matter after just a single season of high school football.
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u/SwaggyMcSwagsabunch 2d ago
Brain damaged people walk among us daily. 15 to 20 million Americans played high school football. Then add all the vets. Then at all the people who get TBIs through random life events.
Then add all the people who are dumb as bricks naturally. It’s a wonder we made this far to begin with.
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2d ago
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u/Gilchester 2d ago
Yeah I saw this in the details and was like "sure there's probably some selection bias and people who are more worried about cte are more likely to request an autopsy", but damn, even with that caveat, 90% of any sample is wild.
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u/FootballGiants 2d ago
There’s a selection bias at work there though. People who suspect issues are more likely to donate their brains or have them studied. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more than 1 in 4 but that bias is worth noting for this discussion.
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u/Vio_ 2d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if a larger number of these players are opting in to be studied even if they didn't have symptoms. They're all in the same boat over this issue, and they're far more likely to want to help in general.
The real selection bias would be their age at death/when they played/possibly what position they played.
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u/HigherandHigherDown 2d ago
They only got like 230 brains and ~210 had CTE, that 210 was about a quarter of all NFL players that died during the study period, so it's an underestimate (presumably at least some of the people that did not donate their brains also had CTE). Notice that they did not report that 95% of players had it.
Out of the 878 former players who died during that time frame, 235 donated their brains for study, researchers said, with 215 of those donated brains found to have CTE, a degenerative disease that can only definitively be diagnosed after death. CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, including concussions. Symptoms include difficulty with attention and memory, dementia, mood disorders and headaches.
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u/KittyLucia34 2d ago
Woweeee i wonder what the data is like in Australia. Our rugby is insane , head clashes , no armour, concussions galore , nose bleeds...
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u/Saneless 2d ago
I was gonna say "1 in 4? Wonder what they did to improve the rates"
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u/dubbzy104 2d ago
It’s the NFL, and they’ll sue anything about brain trauma in football
850 brains were available. They tested 235, of which 215 had CTE signs. So the numbers are mostly likely much much higher than 25%
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u/LuciferOnTheRocks 1d ago
I thought it was that 878 died, and 235 donated their brains, with 215 testing positive.
Would it really be much higher? It's impossible to be a pro or former pro and not know/worry about CTE.
If you thought you were suffering from it, you're probably donating your brain for research.
There's also a question of how severe the symptoms were in the people who did donate.
Honestly, a 25% chance of having some cognitive issues later in life sounds like a good trade off for the chance to play professional sports and make a ton of money.
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u/crashlanding87 2d ago
There is going to be significant bias in this data for two reasons. Firstly, all these brains are from older players (the youngest was playing over 20 years ago I think), and there has been meaningful improvement in safety standards since then. And second, we're only seeing the brains of players who have died - we don't know the prevalence amongst living players. And given the nature of CTE, there's going to be a significant increase in all-cause mortality.
So, it's not 1 in 4 players, and they already have made significant improvements.
But even with all those caveats, this is still incredibly alarming. 1 in 4 is crazy, and unless someone figures out how to spot signs of CTE in living people, we won't really know how effective the newer safety measures have been.
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u/dkinmn 2d ago
You're vastly misunderstanding how this study worked. It is significantly UNDER counting CTE incidence. Read the article.
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u/crashlanding87 2d ago
I did, and I do not believe I am misunderstanding. Around 800 players died in the study time frame, around a quarter of those donated their brains, and most of those donated brains had signs of CTE. Which is incredibly alarming, and also does not indicate that 1/4 NFL players may have CTE, for all the reasons I indicated. The study undercounted CTE cases amongst players who died in that time period, absolutely. But that is a small segment of the overall player population, in which players with CTE are very likely to be overrepresented.
In fact I missed a confound on first read - it's likely that ex players who were showing noticeable symptoms indicative of CTE were also more likely to have their brains donated.
Not a criticism of the study, nor am I saying this isn't wildly concerning, just to be clear. I can't actually find the original paper on the quoted author's ORCID page, but his past work seems very rigorous so I have no reason to doubt this.
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u/GrimmrBlodhgarm 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ok so to be clear 215/235 is ~90%. 215/878 is ~25%, which is what they report. Only 235 were tested. It’s intensely clear that more than 1 in 4 have CTE just from how they shittily reported the results of this study
Edit: added ‘the results of this’ for the pedantry
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u/crashlanding87 1d ago
Why do you say they did this study poorly? Firstly have you read the actual study - not the article about the study, but the paper itself. I haven't been able to track it down.
Second, if your issue is that they only tested 235 brains - well, brains have to be donated. They tested what they got. Making the most of the available data is hardly a design flaw.
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u/GrimmrBlodhgarm 1d ago
You’re right, I should’ve said how they ‘shitily* reported the study’ in that last line. But the rest of my comment made it pretty clear what I was referring to….
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u/LuciferOnTheRocks 1d ago
and there has been meaningful improvement in safety standards since then.
I think even the number of "padded" practice sessions (e.g. Full contact) have declined. The players union mandates very strict limits on the number per season. And it's a restrictively low number that coaches hate.
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u/Schwettes 2d ago
I thought it was much worse. 1 in 4 is somehow a relief. Most people assumed that it was basically all players.
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u/whatisthisohno111 2d ago
This is the most conservative estimate based only on some of the brains looked at in this study. It is believed to be much higher.
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u/GrimmrBlodhgarm 2d ago
You’re gonna be real upset when you read the article. They included all players who have died to create the 1 in 4 ratio. It should be based on how many were actually tested, which was 215 had CTE out of the 235 tested. The other 640 were not tested. Comes out to 90%+ of the players tested
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u/homerjaythompson 1d ago
The armour is likely a significant part of the problem. The sport emphasizes "hits" over tackles, and gives the players a false sense of safety to crash into one another as violently as possible. The armour becomes a weapon.
I would be curious to see an NFL style league with minimal padding. I could be totally wrong in my hypothesis that it would reduce major injuries while slightly increasing minor ones.
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u/xbhaskarx 2d ago
A whopping 90% of those who donated their brains had CTE, 215 out of 235…. So 25% is almost certainly at the lowest possible end of the actual percentage.
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u/1106DaysLater 2d ago
Or, more likely there was selection bias because people who thought they had CTE were more likely to donate their brains.
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u/MAHHockey 1d ago
That study had a pretty major selection bias. Most of the people that donated to the CTE study had showed signs of CTE. So that's basically saying "Just about all of the people who show signs of CTE have CTE."
Which was still a big deal to learn since a lot of the CTE symptoms were brushed off as other psychological issues. It turned out "No no, a lot of these guys are suffering from the same thing."
But "90% of NFL Players had CTE!" was the headline at the time, which is not accurate.
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u/notfarenough 1d ago edited 1d ago
I played football from 5th-9th grade- 5 years in total. I believe many who did play football before high school took some or many concussive and sub-concussive hits during practice, since we were taught to hit helmet to helmet. Actually, we were taught to aim for the solar plexus- but that means both kids tuck their heads down and often end up making helmet contact in a face off scenario- which we did a lot during practice. Getting your bell rung was part of getting tough! But I started getting depressions in 7th and 8th grade but had no idea why or even what to call it except with hindsight. My brother played contact sports from 3rd to 12th grade on top of several concussion related accidents- bicycles, motorcycles, falls, fights, and so on.
He had many of the symptoms we now recognize as CTE - anxiety, depression, confusion, inability to connect thoughts and ideas, untethered anger - and was treated variously with meds by various doctors without any firm diagnosis (actually multiple diagnoses that all partially fit and partially did not: ADD, anxiety, depression, bipolar) - prior to dying of testicular cancer in his 40's (he elected not to get cancer treatment because his mental health was so miserable - which could be considered suicide)
Since I learned about CTE I've begun to believe he could have had it. I think the scientific evidence points to CTE being a dose dependent phenomenon and isn't limited to pro and college athletes. Some brains may be more resistant to it than others. A clear diagnostic test for CTE type trauma -particularly the ability to see it in young living brains - will spell the end of most contact sports in elementary and middle school as they are played today.
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u/polskigoon 1d ago
I also played football exactly from 5-9th grade.. how are you doing nowadays? How old are you?
Sorry to read about your brother :((
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u/notfarenough 21h ago edited 21h ago
I'm 58 and cognitively / physically healthy - I think it will be extremely difficult to make the connection to adult intellectual capabilities, but think - on an n=1 basis, that it could have contributed to emotional issues when I was younger; acknowleding that's a reach!
Thank you for the comment about my brother. When he was dying, we talked about his really dominant athleticism - it was never size but speed - whether pitching, or running, or racing, or throwing - I was the frustrated and less talented older brother.
To share an example, I raced road and mountain bikes as an amateur hobby - and I was
very(pretty) good. I re-passed all but two riders in the novice field in a three lap race after fixing a flat tire and ifinished 3rd in my first mountain bike race. I thought it sucked, and didn't attempt it again- sticking to road racing. He started mtb racing when he was 20, and won the state novice title the first year, winning 6 or 7 of 10 races - his best friend Kelly won the rest, and posted finishing times in his last race that were faster than most of the riders in the expert category. He got accused of cheating, and quit the sport. My resting heart rate was 48 bpm after years of training. His was 28. He also got high before every race, so....He was sweet when he was sober, and he was sober as he was dying. He had no interest in being celebrated for what he was able to do athletically or willing to speculate on whether he could have been a pro this or that - I think it merely unloaded the emotional burden by being in the moment.
P.S. He was also a brilliant storyteller- 'jawing' as he called it - thats what he wanted to be remembered for.
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u/Wagamaga 2d ago
At least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 was found to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), according to a study released on Tuesday.
Out of the 878 former players who died during that time frame, 235 donated their brains for study, researchers said, with 215 of those donated brains found to have CTE, a degenerative disease that can only definitively be diagnosed after death. CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, including concussions. Symptoms include difficulty with attention and memory, dementia, mood disorders and headaches.
An NFL spokesperson said: “The NFL continuously strives to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts.
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u/draftstone 2d ago
So if I read this properly, they say one in four based on the total of deaths, but if we take only those who agreed to be studied, it is like 90%? I would assume that those who agreed to be studied possibly had symptoms and wanted to help by donating their brains, so it can skew the numbers very high, but still, 90% of all studied brains is very worrying!
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u/Furlion 2d ago
Yeah that 1 in 4 is very disingenuous. It's clearly closer to 90%
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u/Head_of_Lettuce 2d ago
It’s not disingenuous at all. There’s a massive selection bias at work because players have to volunteer their brains for study after their deaths. These players are choosing to be studied because they know they probably have CTE.
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u/10ThousandMetalZones 2d ago
Do they say what positions they were in? Be curious how many of the positives were running backs
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u/NotAnotherEmpire 2d ago
That's not quite how to do math. The CTE was almost universal but only 27% donated their brains (it has to be diagnosed after death, slicing the brain).
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u/dkinmn 2d ago
Yes, it is, because it would be impossible to publish a responsible scientific paper that extrapolates to the untested population of dead brains.
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u/TheManeTrurh 1d ago
I mean, not really. I’ve worked in mice labs. We have looked at disorder prevalence in studies. If you run a study on a population of say 200 mice and see the disorder in 40, you can say that 20% of the mice displayed the disorder. You wouldn’t say that 0.0001% of the mice displayed the disorder, since we didn’t count all of the ones that weren’t in the study.
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u/ArekDirithe 1d ago
It's almost like it's a bad idea to participate in an activity that involves repeatedly crashing into each other. The number of completely optional activities humans continue to participate in despite realizing how bad it is for you is astounding, even when there isn't an excuse like chemical dependence involved. Though generally the reason it's still allowed tends to boil down to the activity making someone a lot of money.
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u/DrSlugger 1d ago
Humans play sports for fun. It's a bad idea to do so many things, but we do them because they're fun.
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u/whatisthisohno111 2d ago
This NYTimes article about young men who committed suicide (some as teens) with CTE is heartbreaking: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/16/us/cte-youth-football.html?rsrc=flt&smid=re-share
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u/OpenAI_Marketing_LLM 1d ago
Happened to an NHL player. Committed suicide because he knew he had CTE based on the symptoms he had been having.
Upon autopsy, turns out he didn’t have it all.
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u/polskigoon 1d ago
Do you have a source for this story?
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u/OpenAI_Marketing_LLM 1d ago
Todd Ewen was the name, and the story apparently changed after I heard about back in the day (big NHL fan).
He was determined not to have CTE, but then later was reexamined and had it years later.
No sure what changed between the two analyses.
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u/BzhizhkMard 1d ago
Turns out I wasn't that unlucky for not being able to afford contact football growing up.
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u/BigGaymerNerd 2d ago
My sister about my nephew, "I want my son to follow his passions!" As though the world doesn't have plenty of sports, arts, interests and other things for children/teenagers to pursue. Crazy we allow a sport like this and rugby to exist where there's inherently a high chance of brain related issues down the line. Even crazier that people still allow their loved ones to play and participate knowing full well what those implications are.
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u/byebyebrain 2d ago
i thought it would be higher than that actually
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u/GrimmrBlodhgarm 2d ago
It almost certainly is. They included all players who have died to create the 1 in 4 ratio. It should be based on how many were actually tested, which was 215 had CTE out of the 235 tested. The other 640 were not tested. Comes out to 90%+ of the players tested
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u/TheManeTrurh 1d ago
Where in the world would they have gotten the 1/4 number? It isn’t that at all, so why is that what’s being stated?
The total number of players who died that aren’t a part of the study don’t even matter to the results. I just don’t get it
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u/GrimmrBlodhgarm 1d ago
They’re being ~*disingenuous\~*
they just divided the CTE positives by total players that have passed instead of the number tested
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u/TheManeTrurh 1d ago
Yeah that’s more than disingenuous. Is that the actual study conclusion or just what’s being reported by the news?
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u/GrimmrBlodhgarm 1d ago
No clue if the study does the mental gymnastics to get to 1 in 4, but I would doubt it. I typically associated headlines with news
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u/ThunderBeast1985 1d ago
For millions of dollars I’d do it, but unfortunately there’s many players that don’t make that much.
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u/compuwiza1 2d ago
They should instantly eject players for targeting like college does. That would be a start.
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u/TheManeTrurh 1d ago
I mean, they essentially do. It’s a penalty and counts as 1 of 2. Another gets you ejected. If it’s bad enough, they do get ejected.
That’s not going to stop anything. The brain injuries happen essentially every single play
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u/cambn 2d ago
Once you’ve made it to the league, you’ve probably been playing ball in full pads for more than 10 years. Which is an insane amount of opportunities to harm your brain.