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Football and CTE


dfwabel

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In the new study, Gorgoraptis and colleagues examined tau accumulation in 21 living patients who had suffered a single traumatic brain injury in a car accident, assault or fall from a meaningful height many years prior. When they looked inside the patients’ brains, scientists uncovered the protein by injecting a molecule that attaches to tau. The molecule emits radiation that special sensors can pick up.

 

The scans revealed about two-thirds of TBI patients had elevated levels of tau in their brains in comparison to healthy subjects of the same age. But the amount of tau varied from patient to patient. About a third of TBI patients had extensive increases in tau, but another third showed no abnormality. The final third’s tau levels landed in the middle the researchers report Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Although the researchers saw the same kinds of tau accumulations that are present in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, the tau masses piled up in different parts of the brain in TBI patients than those with Alzheimer’s. The finding also suggests the pattern of tau accumulation may help diagnose the type of neurodegeneration a patient suffers from.

And, for both Alzheimer’s and CTE, detecting these build-ups in living patients opens the door for future clinical trials that could clear tau from the brain, or even just slow down tau-related dementias. But the biggest boon is time.

“Our findings … pave the way towards detecting tau after traumatic brain injury when it really matters – as early as possible during their lifetime,” Gorgoraptis said.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/09/04/could-a-single-traumatic-brain-injury-be-as-damaging-as-repeated-blows-to-the-head/#.XXEMWShKiUk

 

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/11/508/eaaw1993

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11 minutes ago, Cosmic said:

Now we're doing The Decision for CTE results?

 

10 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

It does seem a little crass.  

 

But perhaps some crass showmanship is worth it, if that’s what we need to give this crisis its due attention. 

Apparently, the Concussion Legacy Foundation hosts a gala in Chicago annually. CLF's co-found Chris Nowinski, is a native of Arlington Heights, IL.

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36 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

It does seem a little crass.  

 

But perhaps some crass showmanship is worth it, if that’s what we need to give this crisis its due attention. 

 

32 minutes ago, dfwabel said:

I wouldn't mind that so much, but Friday night is the stereotypical time to release news that you want buried. I get that we're sort of past the era where everyone gathers 'round the evening news, but it's still a strange choice to hold off on the news until that event.

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Oh no...they are trying to fool youth football into thinking helmets are the problem of the game.

 

NFL announces a $3M "Helmet Challenge"

 

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The National Football League on Thursday announced the NFL Helmet Challenge, an innovation challenge that aims to stimulate the development by experts, innovators and helmet manufacturers of a new helmet for NFL players that outperforms, based on laboratory testing, all helmet models currently worn by NFL players. Up to $3 million will be available in the challenge, including $2 million in grant funding to support the development of a helmet prototype and a $1 million award.

 

A symposium will be held November 13-15 in Youngstown, Ohio, to kick off the challenge. Over three days, the symposium will bring together experts from different industries to share information and work collaboratively on innovative helmet ideas.

 

The challenge will culminate in May 2021 with the applicants submitting helmet prototypes for testing in laboratory conditions that represent potentially concussive impacts in the NFL. Applicants will compete for up to a $1 million award.

 

"Helmet technology is advancing at an impressive rate. Yet, we believe that even more is possible. The NFL Helmet Challenge represents an unprecedented combination of financing, research, data and engineering expertise in an effort to create a more protective helmet," said Jeff Miller, the NFL's Executive Vice President for Health and Safety Innovation. "Innovation can be catalyzed if we engage with creative and talented people from across disciplines to attack this challenge together. In collaboration with the NFL Players Association, we are making changes on and off the field in an effort to improve protection for every player. Trying to ensure that players wear the best possible helmet is a substantial part of that commitment."

 

This challenge is the next phase in the league's Engineering Roadmap, which aims to improve the understanding of football biomechanics and to create incentives for businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and helmet manufacturers to develop new protective equipment. Between the kickoff symposium in November and the submission of helmets for final evaluation in May 2021, applicants will have access to a range of resources to support the development of their helmet prototype, including up to $2 million in HeadHealthTECH Challenge grant funding. Other available resources will include those developed through the Engineering Roadmap, such as NFL video review data and finite element models of modern football helmets. To encourage broad participation, the league is also offering grant funding to certain requesting university students and faculty to offset travel costs associated with attending the symposium.

 

The league will team up with Youngstown-based America Makes, a manufacturing innovation institute specializing in additive manufacturing and 3D printing, to host the November kickoff symposium. The symposium agenda will include background on the current state of the science around helmets and certain concussions in the NFL, information on the challenge and available resources and breakout sessions to stimulate networking, team building and the creation of successful grant applications.

 

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9 hours ago, dfwabel said:

 

 

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Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the BU CTE Center, announced the findings during the Concussion Legacy Foundation’s Chicago Honors Dinner on Friday night at the request of Mikita’s family.

 

That could explain why the news was brought out as it is. 

I saw, I came, I left.

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  • 4 weeks later...
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For every year of absorbing the pounding and repeated head collisions that come with playing American tackle football, a person’s risk of developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a devastating neurodegenerative disease, increases by 30 percent. And for every 2.6 years of play, the risk of developing CTE doubles. These new findings from an analysis of 266 deceased former amateur and professional football players—reported in Annals of Neurology by a team of researchers from the Boston University CTE Center—are the first to quantify the strength of the link between playing tackle football and developing CTE. 

 

In a critical distinction between many previous CTE studies, the analysis included dozens of brains of former football players who did not have CTE. That sizable control group provided enough data for the researchers to be confident in their discovery that there is a strong relationship between CTE risk and the number of years a person plays football.

 

As part of their analysis, the researchers also looked at other potential variables, including the total number of concussions, football positions played, a person’s age at first exposure to tackle football, their participation in other contact sports, their race, and the presence of other diseases, to see whether those factors had any influence on a person’s CTE risk, or if they were diagnosed with CTE, the severity of their CTE symptoms. They found no associations between these other variables and CTE risk or severity.

But the researchers did find that among players with a CTE diagnosis, their odds of developing severe symptoms of the disease doubled for every additional 5.3 years of football played. Those who played tackle football fewer than 4.5 years were 10 times less likely to develop CTE than those who played longer, although several men who played four years or fewer were diagnosed with CTE, including three whose only contact sport was football. Those who sustained the longest careers, playing more than 14.5 years, were 10 times more likely to develop CTE than those who played fewer years. But the researchers noted that several players with football careers longer than 15 years did not have evidence of CTE.

http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/cte-football/

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191007115239.htm

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

https://www.wxxinews.org/post/ny-lawmakers-consider-ban-tackle-football-children

 

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NEW YORK (AP)  A former college football player suffering from early dementia is among those urging New York state legislators to ban tackle football for children 12 and younger.

 

T.J. Abraham testified Tuesday at a New York State Assembly committee hearing in Manhattan. Now a doctor, Abraham talked about the brain damage that he says has destroyed his medical practice and everyday life.

 

The health committee also heard doctors and other experts talk about a possible ban that lawmakers have yet to formalize.

 

The proposal follows a Boston University study reporting that children who play tackle football may develop cognitive, behavioral and mood problems.

 

Scott Hallenbeck, the executive director of USA Football, argued that his national governing body has made the sport safer than ever with protective measures for young athletes.

 

NY State Assembly Archive Page with links to the agenda, audio and video from the Committee.

 

NOTE: TJ Abraham is only 42.

 

Also, if you didn't see the "60 Minutes" story earlier this fall about former Syracuse Orange/Atlanta Falcon turned FOX analyst and fiction author, Tim Green, here is a YouTube clip.  Green, does not have CTE (confirmed), but like OJ Brigance and Steve Gleason, has one of the other major, untreatable, detrimental diseases...ALS.

 

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