Brain damage commonly associated with boxers and recently found in deceased
N.F.L. players has been identified in a former college athlete who never played professionally, representing new evidence about the possible safety risks of college and perhaps high school football.
As six former N.F.L. players who died young have been found with the condition, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, scrutiny has focused on the N.F.L. environment. This new case, an athlete who stopped playing after college, testifies more to the sport of football itself, said doctors involved in its discovery............................
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McKee said she was convinced that the extreme encephalopathy found in Borich’s brain contributed to his downward spiral, because the disease kills brain cells involved in executive function and mood moderation. She said that research was continuing at her facility and elsewhere to learn what genetic factors might leave some people more susceptible to the condition, but also emphasized that only physical trauma can actually cause it.
“These changes are devastating — they’re extreme and they’re throughout the brain,” McKee said. “They’re in the cortex where we think and make judgments, where we do most of the thought that make us humans. It’s hard to imagine what the last few years of his life were like.”
She added: “Certainly we need more cases to evaluate. But this extreme case and the way it fits into the spectrum or pattern of professional players makes it very reasonable to think there are other cases out there that we haven’t recognized. We don’t need more right now to know there’s a problem. This is not a variation in normal.”
