With so many high profile football players being impacted by CTE,
it's natural that parents are wondering, should I let my child play this sport?
I'm here today in the lab of BUCTE researcher Ann McKee to talk with her
about what's actually happening to brains during football play.
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Thanks so much for sitting down with me today in your lab.
Can you tell us where we are?
>> Yeah, this is the lab at Jamaica Plain, the VA of Jamaica Plain.
This is where we do all the magic.
Now, this is where we process all the slides.
Here is where we make the diagnosis on people that have donated their brain.
But of course, the research is all satellites and offshoots.
>> At this point you've looked at hundreds, or
is it now more than a thousand brains with CTE.
>> We have about 850 brains in, it's probably higher than that today.
>> Wow.
>> We've analyzed somewhere between 650 and 700 of them.
>> Can you take me back to the day that you looked at the first
brain of a football player where you saw signs of CTE?
>> I had looked at boxers' brain, and I've been really floored to see the changes.
These really profound neurodegenerative changes are in boxers,
just florid amounts of tau, this abnormal protein building up all over the brain.
And it was in a very peculiar constellation,
it's circled around blood vessels.
It involved parts of the brain that aren't affected in things
like Alzheimer's disease.
So it was truly mysterious to me.
And then when I looked at the first football player,
I knew he was 45 years old.
When I looked at his brain grossly, when we looked at it with the naked eye,
it looked fine.
And I thought, is this what's going on in football players?
I'm a huge football fan.
I've been watching the games for decades, and
I had no clue that they were getting brain trauma.
But could they be, that was a whole new door for me to push open and see.
And so I look finally we got the slides back on this 45 year old and
he had extraordinary disease.
I mean it was florid disease tau everywhere and that just blow me away.
I mean I was just stunt.
And when we look at these slides, and I think we have some.
>> I'd love to see them.
>> We can actually see the tau with the naked eye.
And this is Aaron Hernandez, 27 years old.
In these particular areas of the brain, it all just looks like just tiny dots.
But those dots are in areas that are really affecting brain function.
You have to have a deep pathology to be able to see it with the naked eye.
This is not a trivial amount of disease.
Ordinarily you can only see it under the microscope when you magnify it
hundreds and hundreds of times.
And then these are older football players, and
it gives you an idea of what it becomes.
So these are 20 year old and this is a 65 year old.
>> That's really remarkable.
>> Yeah, you start to see it spreads.
It involves more and more regions of brain.
It just starts encompassing vast regions.
>> Do the effects of football play as a young person?
Do they snowball and continue to get worse in someone like this spring here?
>> In most individuals it will progress.
And the longer they live, the worse their disease will get,
not only pathologically but their symptoms will get worse.
>> Parents right now are starting to make those decisions that are gonna
shape the next generation of football players.
If you could talk to parents who are struggling with that decision right now of
whether to let their child play football,
what would you say to those parents from your perspective?
>> Well, there's no question that sports, physical fitness,
team sports Athletic endeavors are hugely important to a child's development,
not just physical but social development.
And I would never want our kids not to be physically active and engaged in sports.
But at the same time, I would say to a parent,
there is clear evidence that you're putting your child at risk.
If they play American football, we found that for
every 2.6 years of playing football,
every 2.6 years of playing football, your risk for CTE doubles.
It didn't matter if it was NFL football or Pee Wee football,
it was just years of football, if you're dead set on having them play football or
want to play football and can't be persuaded to play something else.
I would ask that they start at a later age, so
at least they're not getting the dose of a high number of years of football.
And I would ask them to play in a conservative way.
Protecting their head.
Not using their helmet as a weapon, conscious of the fact
that you have one brain, one very special and fragile brain.
And, you need to behave in ways that keep it safe.
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