NFL-At least one in four former players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE, study shows

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By Amy Tennery

NEW YORK, Aug 25 : 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, researchers said, with 215 of those donated brains found to have CTE, a degenerative disease that can only definitively be diagnosed after death.

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. 

"The NFL remains committed to ensuring that the NFL community has access to a robust - and expanding - set of resources to enhance their physical and mental well being.

"We encourage former players to utilize these resources to identify and seek treatment when they are concerned about their health."

The study's lead author Daniel Daneshvar, the chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Mass General Brigham and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, said that repeated traumatic brain injuries are a known factor in elevated rates of neurodegenerative disease.

"Similarly, we and others have shown that in NFL players, specifically, there is about a four times higher rate of death from neurodegenerative disease than the general population," he added.

The study from Mass General Brigham, Boston University, and the Concussion & CTE Foundation also found dementia was common among brain donors, with researchers urging prevention measures that focus on cutting down on repetitive head impacts across all levels of the sport.

"The bulk of the head impacts that these former