CTE: First Case In A Professional Female Athlete
CTE, also known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, has mostly been linked to male American football players. But it’s not simply a problem for men.
CTE, also known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, has mostly been linked to male American football players. But it's not simply a problem for men.
CTE, also known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, has mostly been linked to male American football players. But it’s not simply a problem for men.
The first professional female athlete to be identified with CTE, a degenerative brain illness brought on by repetitive traumatic head traumas, is former Australian Rules football player Heather Anderson, according to researchers at the Australian Sports Brain Bank on Monday.
Following Anderson’s suicide in 2022 at age 28, her family sent her brain to ASBB as a gift. She spent most of her childhood participating in contact sports (Rugby League and Aussie Rules), and in 2016, after spending several years in youth leagues, she was selected to play in the Women’s Australian Football League.
She retired after just one season due to several injuries, including one concussion that was proven and required her to wear a helmet. Later, she trained as an army nurse.
Concussion Legacy Foundation CEO Chris Nowinski told Al-Jazeera that Anderson’s “landmark” diagnosis should serve as a “wake-up call for women’s sports.”
“We can prevent CTE by preventing repeated impacts to the head, and we must begin a dialogue with leaders in women’s sports today so we can save future generations of female athletes from suffering.”
Chris Nowinski said via ESPN.
High-contact athletes are particularly vulnerable to CTE, including those participating in American and Australian football, hockey, rugby, boxing, and mixed martial arts. However, since there are so few high-contact professional sports for women and the NFL’s CTE crisis has received so much attention globally, males have received most of the attention about CTE. A woman’s brain exhibits CTE in the same manner as a man’s, according to ASBB head Michael Buckland.
“There were multiple CTE lesions as well as abnormalities nearly everywhere I looked in her cortex. It was indistinguishable from the dozens of male cases I’ve seen.”
Michael Buckland
