A new study examining the brains of former NFL players has revealed a nearly 25 percent chance that players will develop the degenerative brain disease.
According to the study published by the British Medical Journal (h/t John Branch of the New York Times), at least one in four people who have played in the NFL could expect to end up with CTE.
The study focused on 878 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021. From that group, it was found “at least” 215 of them (24.5 percent) had chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, lead author of the study, noted the 24.5 percent figure could be on the “low end” in part because it does not account for the 643 brains from the deceased group that were not examined.
The authors of the study said that out of 338 former NFL players who donated their brains to be studied for neuropathological evaluation, 315 (93.2 percent) were diagnosed with CTE.
Those figures come from a sample size of 1,712 NFL players who died between 2008 and 2021.
Boston University wrote in 2023 that a study of 376 former NFL players showed 345 of them had been diagnosed with degenerative brain disease.
The disease is likely caused by repeated head injuries, leading to the death of nerve cells in the brain. There is currently no way to definitively diagnose CTE in a living person at this point.
Former NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck was part of a group that recently went through a series of tests and scans at Boston University that doctors hope will eventually help lead to the ability to diagnose CTE in a living person.
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