[Elvis]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/larg ... rs-n786386

CTE Study Finds Evidence of Brain Disease in 110 Out of 111 Former NFL Players

by ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO — Research on 202 former football players found evidence of brain disease in nearly all of them, from athletes in the NFL, college and even high school.

It's the largest update on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease linked with repeated head blows.

But the report doesn't confirm that the condition is common in all football players; it reflects high occurrence in samples at a Boston brain bank that studies CTE. Many donors or their families contributed because of the players' repeated concussions and troubling symptoms before death.

"There are many questions that remain unanswered," said lead author Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neuroscientist. That includes, "how common is this" in the general population and all football players?

"How many years of football is too many?" and "What is the genetic risk? Some players do not have evidence of this disease despite long playing years," she noted.

It's also uncertain if some players' lifestyle habits — alcohol, drugs, steroids, diet — might somehow contribute, McKee said.

Dr. Munro Cullum, a neuropsychologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, emphasized that the report is based on a selective sample of men who were not necessarily representative of all football players. He said problems other than CTE might explain some of their most common symptoms before death — depression, impulsivity and behavior changes. He was not involved in the report.

Lead author Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neuroscientist, studies brain samples of former football players. Courtesy Journal of the American Medical Association
McKee said research from the brain bank may lead to answers and an understanding of how to detect the disease in life, "while there's still a chance to do something about it." There's no known treatment.

The strongest scientific evidence says CTE can only be diagnosed by examining brains after death, although some researchers are experimenting with tests performed on the living. Many scientists believe that repeated blows to the head increase risks for developing CTE, leading to progressive loss of normal brain matter and an abnormal buildup of a protein called tau. Combat veterans and athletes in rough contact sports like football and boxing are among those thought to be most at risk.

The new report was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

CTE was diagnosed in 177 former players — or nearly 90 percent of brains studied. That includes 110 of 111 brains from former NFL players; 48 of 53 college players; nine of 14 semi-professional players, seven of eight Canadian Football league players and three of 14 high school players. The disease was not found in brains from two younger players.

Lead author Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neuroscientist, studies brain samples of former football players. Courtesy Journal of the American Medical Association
A panel of neuropathologists made the diagnosis by examining brain tissue, using recent criteria from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, McKee said.

The NFL issued a statement saying these reports are important for advancing science related to head trauma and said the league "will continue to work with a wide range of experts to improve the health of current and former NFL athletes."

After years of denials, the NFL acknowledged a link between head blows and brain disease and agreed in a $1 billion settlement to compensate former players who had accused the league of hiding the risks.

The journal update includes many previously reported cases, including former NFL players Bubba Smith, Ken Stabler, Junior Seau and Dave Duerson.

New ones include retired tight end Frank Wainright, whose 10-year NFL career included stints with the Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Ravens. Wainright died last October at age 48 from a heart attack triggered by bleeding in the brain, said his wife, Stacie. She said he had struggled almost eight years with frightening symptoms including confusion, memory loss and behavior changes.

Wainright played before the league adopted stricter safety rules and had many concussions, she said. He feared CTE and was adamant about donating his brain, she said.

"A lot of families are really tragically affected by it — not even mentioning what these men are going through and they're really not sure what is happening to them. It's like a storm that you can't quite get out of," his wife said.

Frank Wycheck, another former NFL tight end, said he worries that concussions during his nine-year career — the last seven with the Tennessee Titans — have left him with CTE and he plans to donate his brain to research.

"Some people have heads made of concrete, and it doesn't really affect some of those guys," he said. "But CTE is real."

"I know I'm suffering through it, and it's been a struggle and I feel for all the guys out there that are going through this," said Wycheck, 45.

In the new report, McKee and colleagues found the most severe disease in former professional players; mild disease was found in all three former high school players diagnosed with the disease. Brain bank researchers previously reported that the earliest known evidence of CTE was found in a high school athlete who played football and other sports who died at age 18. He was not included in the current report.

The average age of death among all players studied was 66. There were 18 suicides among the 177 diagnosed.

[TomSlick]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/large-report-finds-evidence-brain-disease-most-former-football-players-n786386

CTE Study Finds Evidence of Brain Disease in 110 Out of 111 Former NFL Players

by ASSOCIATED PRESS

It's also uncertain if some players' lifestyle habits — alcohol, drugs, steroids, diet — might somehow contribute, McKee said.

On the other side, how much would diet help in preventing CTE or alleviate some of the symptoms? Research is always being done on how inflammation is bad for the body, not just in the joints but in organs and your brain...Dementia, Alzheimer's, etc.

Avocados, nuts and seeds, olive oil and fish have all been shown to reduce inflammation.

[dieterbrock]

I wonder what % of the population has cte while never playing in the NFL.
I've had 2 concussions.
I saw a report that teen age girls are susceptible to concussion playing soccer.
Wonder what their scans would look like

[St. Loser Fan]

I wonder what % of the population has cte while never playing in the NFL.
I've had 2 concussions.
I saw a report that teen age girls are susceptible to concussion playing soccer.
Wonder what their scans would look like

They keep adjusting the rule for headers in soccer to older and older.
http://usclubsoccer.org/2016/03/14/implementation-guidelines-for-u-s-soccers-player-safety-campaign-concussion-initiatives-heading-for-youth-players/

[HopHead Ram]

CTE scares the hell out of me, I played over 10 years of tackle football (from Pop Warner through College)The older I am getting, the more I tend to have trouble recalling things. My wife tells me that I get a little moody at times as well. I played in a time when getting your bell rung was just part of the game, you would sit out a play or two and then coach would sent you back in. I knocked myself out in High School once and was back on the field in the 2nd half with a massive headache. Smelling salts got me through that game.

My son played football but we made the decision to only let him play Flag until he reached High School and then we would have a discussion, He chose going to a STEM High School for Engineering over a school with a football team so the discussion never had to take place.

[Neil039]

I am sure I have given myself CTE, but the rumors about going blind might be wrong. I'm in my 40's now, vision still rocks.

Serious note, equipment improvements have been slow. Very unfortunate. Dickerson is on my nerves lately but he always wore a bunch of extras, appears to have really helped him.

[St. Loser Fan]

[/zn/]

Just adding to the info here.

Some quotes from another article that adds a little more context.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencen ... story.html

The study’s authors, led by Boston University neuropathologist Ann McKee, cautioned that the study does not suggest severe traumatic brain damage would be found so widely in all who have played football.

“These numbers are very startling and very high, but this is a skewed sample,” McKee told The Times.

he 202 brains examined in the study are called a “convenience sample.” They were donated, typically, by families who had witnessed troubling symptoms that often progressed among players. In many cases of suicide, for instance, donor families strongly suspected that trauma-related brain damage had led to their loved one’s death. And most had played football much longer than is typical, often starting young and continuing to play well into their 20s, McKee said.

For instance, many of the men whose families reported the most problematic symptoms, including mood disturbances, explosiveness and self-harm, were found to have only mild levels of CTE’s distinctive brain abnormalities, McKee said.

“We wondered whether there’s another pathology we’re not capturing in the data set,” McKee said — factors that, after trauma, might jump-start brain damage, exacerbate it or simply facilitate its spread across the brain. Possibilities include inflammation, the shearing of the fibers that lash neurons together or damage to the brain’s white matter — the fatty bundles of tissue that carry electrical signals among regions and hemispheres.

In a statement issued Tuesday, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said “we appreciate the work done by Dr. McKee and her colleagues.”

The study leaves “many unanswered questions relating to the cause, incidence and prevalence of long-term effects of head trauma,” he added. But the NFL “is committed to supporting scientific research into CTE and advancing progress in the prevention and treatment of head injuries,” he said, citing the League’s commitment in 2016 to spend $100 million to support medical research and engineering advancements on brain science.

[St. Loser Fan]

Sad article about the end of Vincent Jackson's life.

https://www.tampabay.com/sports/bucs/20 ... otFICrtmjo

Vincent Jackson’s friends haunted by questions about his unexpected death
The former Bucs standout was meticulously prepared for his football afterlife. Then it mysteriously unraveled.

As they await an official cause of death, friends of former Bucs star Vincent Jackson are struggling with more questions than answers.

About how he ended up at an extended-stay hotel.

Why he didn’t reach out to them.

And what kind of pain he was in.

For Adam Itzkowitz, who co-owned Cask Social Kitchen in Tampa with Jackson, it’s all a mystery.

He’s haunted by so much sorrow imagining Jackson at that Brandon Homewood Suites, day in and day out, not responding to attempts to reach him. All alone.

“It’s hard for me to think about it because of that. That solitude at the end,” he said. “And mentally, you almost need that closure, because you look around and think, was there anything that I could’ve done to stop that?”

How could the 6-foot-5, 230-pound Jackson, so visible in his post-career life as a businessman and philanthropist, vanish in plain view?

Jackson was meticulously prepared for his football afterlife. After an NFL career that spanned 12 seasons, the three-time Pro Bowl receiver charged into retirement from the league with multiple business interests.

His parents, Terence and Sherry, each served in the U.S. Army, and Jackson demonstrated his passion for philanthropy with his Jackson in Action 83 Foundation that focused on military families.

He started his primary business venture, CTV Capital, while he was still playing in 2012. A real estate and development company, it offers construction, property management and insurance.

Jackson told business partner Mario Farias that he could have continued his career after his five-year, $55.5 million contract with the Bucs expired following the 2016 season. But unlike many players, he decided to walk away while he still could, rather than limp away from a sport that can be unforgiving to the human body.

“He said, ‘I’ve got plenty of money. But the most important thing is, I like waking up and playing with my kids,’” said Farias, who had recently been working with Jackson on the renovation of the landmark Manhattan Casino in St. Petersburg. “If I take more beatings, I’m not going to be able to do that.”

Jackson and his wife, Lindsey, have four children. She is a first-grade teacher at Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa.

But the couple, married since 2011, had been separated for months.

Itzkowitz, who got his law degree at Stetson in Gulfport, met Jackson through a mutual friend a few years before he stopped playing for the Bucs.

Though the two also invested in Dockside at Riviera Dunes, a waterfront restaurant in Palmetto, Cask Social Kitchen was “always his baby,” Itzkowitz said.

The motto is Eat. Drink. Be Social.

Although his name or likeness appears nowhere, Jackson’s fingerprints are on every facet of the restaurant. It includes the menu, described as “American fare with a Southern twist.”

“He obviously was the financial piece of the build-out, but he was the brains. He gave me the vision for what he wanted executed from there,” Itzkowitz said.

Jackson was deeply engaged, from tasting dishes before they left the kitchen to interviewing restaurant managers, Itzkowitz said.

But Jackson didn’t want Cask to be known as Vincent Jackson’s restaurant. It would have to survive on its own merit. Consequently, other than a framed American flag that flew over Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan dedicated to Jackson, you wouldn’t find any mention of its famous owner there.

The confounding thing to his business partners is that Jackson was always an eternal optimist. If the restaurant had a bad week? Tweak the menu. If they had a bad quarter? We’ll get them next month.

Football analogies were often referenced. “We’re right at the goal line,” Jackson would say. “We’ve just got to brush ourselves off.”

In fact, when an employee at Cask Social Kitchen came into contact with someone who may have had the coronavirus, Jackson shut it down as a precaution — at enormous cost and against the advice of Itzkowitz. Jackson believed it was the right thing to do.

When they opened the restaurant, Itzkowitz insisted on having one of Jackson’s popular sayings anonymously engraved on a beam beneath the loft: “Onwards & Upwards.”

Jackson even mentored some of the Bucs’ young players, such as former quarterback Jameis Winston, about managing life after football.

The first time Farias met Jackson at a coffee shop to discuss possible business opportunities, he was impressed by Jackson’s humility.

“You see this guy, he’s a football player, but you look at him and he looks like a movie star,” Farias said.

“He said, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’re going to become partners. I worked hard my whole life, and now I’m at the point where you get to build legacy.’ And this man was a living legacy.”

Farias said he was on a Zoom call with Jackson the Thursday before he died to discuss efforts to reopen the casino hall in south St. Petersburg in two weeks. Jackson was still fully invested in his business dealings, making his death even more of a shock.

“One of the things that hurt the most was to find out that he was suffering, for whatever reason, and never reached out to any of us,” he said. “None of us. We all were sort of amazed. I would’ve brought his ass right home. I’d do anything.”

By any measure, Jackson’s athletic and academic achievements are remarkable.

He was a straight-A student in high school who majored in business at Northern Colorado. A two-sport star for the Bears, he set the school’s receiving records and led the basketball team in scoring for two years.

Drafted by the Chargers in the second round in 2005, he overcame an injury-filled rookie year to become their go-to receiver. Twice he was named to the Pro Bowl in San Diego — in 2009 and 2011. He reached the NFL’s all-star game again in 2012, his first season with the Bucs when he had a career-high 1,384 yards and eight touchdowns. He led the NFL with 19.2 yards per catch.

But there were signs of his alcohol abuse before he arrived in Tampa Bay. Jackson was arrested and charged with driving under the influence twice, in 2006 and 2009, while playing with the Chargers. He pleaded guilty in both cases and was fined $2,408 and ordered to do a total of 15 days of public service. Because of the DUI arrests, Jackson was suspended for three games to start the 2010 season for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.

Those problems seemed behind him once he arrived in Tampa Bay.

But family members told investigators they had “reason to believe (Jackson) may have suffered from chronic alcoholism and concussions,” according to a statement the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office made after Jackson’s death.

“Honestly, I’m looking back on it myself, and I missed it,” Itzkowitz said. “And I was around him a lot. But that said, any social interaction I was with him at, it wasn’t unusual for someone to have a drink.”

The social drinking didn’t raise eyebrows, his business partner said.

“It wasn’t like he needed to have a drink in his hand,” Itzkowitz said. “It wasn’t like that at all. I’ve met with plenty of people and it’s 10 o’clock in the morning, and they’re pouring themselves a beer. That wasn’t it.”

But the Jackson family was certainly concerned when they didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks. They called some of his business associates, including Itzkowitz.

Itzkowitz tried to call and text Jackson. He heard nothing back.

“That’s when I started to get a little nervous about things,” said Itzkowitz.

Responding to a missing person’s report filed by Jackson’s family, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office finally located the former Bucs and Chargers receiver at a Homewood Suites at the end of a cluster of hotels on South Falkenburg Road on Feb 11.

“I’m curious as to what the sheriff’s office did or didn’t see that ultimately led them to just say, ‘Okay, everything is fine here,’” Itzkowitz said. “I get there’s not much they can do, I’m just curious as to what it is. Because in my mind, I’m thinking at that point, he was not in the right state of mind.”

Jackson’s family, which has limited its comments to brief statements made through a family spokesperson, must have believed that, as well.

After locating Jackson, according to a sheriff’s office source, the family sought to file a petition under the Marchman Act. The Florida statute provides for emergency assistance and temporary detention to individuals requiring substance abuse evaluation and treatment.

“It’s for people who are in danger or harming themselves or others because of their substance abuse,” said Robin Piper, a mental health counselor and CEO of Turning Point in Tampa. “Because they can’t stop drinking or using drugs.”

According to a preliminary case summary report by the sheriff’s office, there were no medications found in Jackson’s room, but a sheriff’s office source said numerous liquor bottles were discovered.

Before the sheriff’s office was notified about the Marchman Act, however, it was too late.

Allison Gorrell, executive director of Jackson’s foundation and a family spokeswoman, would not confirm that the family sought to use the emergency powers of the Marchman Act to intervene. Such requests are exempt from public records laws.

It was around the end of January, just as Jackson’s former team was preparing for Super Bowl 55 in Tampa, that “he kind of went off the grid,” Itzkowitz said. “I’m guessing at that point is where he started to deteriorate,” he said.

While Jackson had many varied interests and businesses, there wasn’t a lot of interaction between them. He was able to compartmentalize his private life and numerous projects.

Itzkowitz said he received a call from someone close to the family Feb. 15 informing him of Jackson’s death.

“I want to say I spoke to (Jackson) when the Bucs got to the Super Bowl, maybe championship week,” Itzkowitz said. “I had asked him if he was going, and he said, “They’re charging $10,000 a ticket. I’ll watch it on TV.”

While Farias spoke with Jackson the day the sheriff had checked up on him, he said he detected no signs his friend was in trouble.

“I was always used to Vincent disappearing for a couple or three days,” Farias said, noting Jackson’s busy schedule. “It would take him three days to get a call back to you.”

This week, Farias and his friends were thinking of a way to honor Jackson.

“We’ve opened a food hall, and we’ve decided to keep one of the kitchens for ourselves,’' Farias said. “We’re going to call it VJ’s. It’s going to be a new American cuisine. I couldn’t think of a better way to memorialize him at a place he gave everything to.’'

To Farias, Jackson will always be that guy wanting to help others wherever he could. And the circumstances of his death will not eclipse the enormous generosity of his life.

“If I live another 100 years, I will never forget his face,’' Farias said. “It just pops up. That smile, that sheepish grin that he had. He was an amazing guy. I’ve known him a handful of years, but he left a mark on people.

“The world is a better place that he lived here. But it’s definitely a sadder place that he’s gone.”

[Hacksaw]

What about boxers? Did CTE used to be called"punchy" ?
If all these cases come back to injury during sports activity, you watch, high school programs will begin getting eliminated. That will likely just be the beginning.