(01-22-2019 07:23 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(01-22-2019 07:09 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(01-20-2019 01:09 PM)franklyconfused Wrote:  

(01-19-2019 05:54 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Rugby coaches will insist that there is a simple way to reduce football injuries--take off the headgear.

With no helmet, players are a lot more aware of proper technique. Put it on, and they think they are invincible and can go spearing people with it.

There are (at this point admittedly isolated) places where rugby is growing as football declines because of the concussion issue.

I've heard this a lot, but I wonder if this is due in part to the fact that rugby doesn't have as much scrutiny because there's less money being thrown around. It also doesn't address the issue of rugby being far less likely to put a ball carrier in a position where there are defenders running full speed at them from in front and from behind at the same time (forward passes). Generally, a ball carrier in rugby is either in front of every defender or behind every defender, maybe with an exception for the full back that they can turn away from (turn the hits from front and back to side-on). A receiver on a crossing route is surrounded by line backers and safeties, and a running back through the line has to deal with linemen and linebackers. I'd like to see experiments where teams demonstrate American football with less or no padding to see if it's viable, but I'm not sold on it, yet.

Some questions for this board might be:

1) Would changes to the game of football, in particular, in order to further prevent/lessen risk of CTE (such as no helmets, etc...) help or hurt Rice's fortunes on the gridiron versus the present competition vis-a-vis where the program is now (has been for many decades, give or take?)

2) If the answer to 1) above is positive for our school, should we then work together in a more concerted (and public) effort with the world's largest Medical Center across the street (and within BRC) to help make it so?

3) Would helping with the "experiments" necessary to reduce these injuries/risks allow (finally) some significant additional millions from the academic budget (and dare I say, endowment) to legitimately flow directly to the athletic dept for the specific intent of improving football health (and then maybe the fortunes of our team on the field in terms of success, "moving the needle" as it were finally?)

4) And finally, would partnering in such manner with the Medical center personnel across the street help improve football attendance and interest as there would be a medical reason for those folks to attend, be interested in Rice's program specifically?

How ethical would such a study or experiment be? I am hardly any expert on medical ethics, but it would seem to me that the known danger is collision forces -- repeated collision forces.

Removing all or some portions of protective equipment -- seems rather hit or miss if that would expand or diminish protection from such repeated collision forces.

And, I dont see where a medical doctor, who has a Socratic oath to 'do no harm', could really be following that oath where the outcome would be so up in the air.

Legally, I think such a program, if not very sure of a positive outcome, would make many plaintiff's attorneys salivate like a dog eyeing a juicy steak on the counter.

I took the Hippocratic Oath once. Not sure about the Socratic Oath. Must be due to CTE.

I am joking by the way but it is the Hippocratic Oath.

(01-22-2019 12:28 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(01-22-2019 12:15 PM)ruowls Wrote:  Does it?

Lost earnings from a Tommy John injury could change one’s socioeconomic position which could negatively impact one’s life expectancy.
There are too many variables and cascade of events to make a blanket statement. The problem is you can’t regulate all the variables and you can’t state the future consequences of any given factor as a stand alone cause. It is why football is such a great sport. It isn’t just about running power against a 3 man front. The dynamics will change from play to play and there is no way to exactly know how that will be.
This is a multi-factorial issue that doesn’t have an easy answer. [/align]

I dont think the 'lost earnings' really compares with the image of drooling glassy eyed Jerry Quarry or Muhammad Ali for boxing.

Nor do I think the 'lost earnings' from a Tommy John surgery really compares with the images of Mike Webster as he drifted away. Not in the slightest.

I understand this is an emotionally charged topic. Ironically, I went to see patients in a nursing home today and although they weren’t Ali, Webster or Quarry, I saw the picture you portrayed. I don’t think any of them played contact sports earlier in life.
I understand what you are saying. I just see more bias in the research to justify some conclusions that are being passed off as fact.
I googled CTE and Lewy Body and interesting articles popped up. The most commonly used word in the articles was may. This may cause that. Contact sport may cause Lewy Body Disease. LBD may cause Parkinson’s. This may be the new dementia. Of course, another article flat out said football and CTE killed the WSU QB per a neuroscience researcher. A study of 600+ postmortem brains with 200+ of them being athletes showed all of “this”. That right there is a red flag. The population of the US is 323 million. So 600 brains were studied with one third athletes. It is unlikely that 108 million people played contact sports. The study isn’t a cross section of society. It is skewed towards the athletes. You don’t know if the cohorts actually are representative of anything. It is very hard to draw epidemiological data from such poorly representive cases.
There is too much unknown and cross over. Like I said earlier, some researchers have suggested the anatomy and physiology of male and female brains are different with female brains being more susceptible to concussion symptoms. CTE is a constellation of symptoms that fit the original researchers biases. What is the prevalence of depression, benign essential tremor, or suicide in the population as a whole? Why do non-athletes get Parkinson’s? Why do some get Alzheimer’s? There was a gene noted to be present in 98% of Alzheimer’s patients. Researchers felt they found a way to predict Alzheimer’s. It was found out that Alzheimer’s only manifested itself in less than 50% of people who had the gene. 98 % have it who have it but less than 50% who have it get it. Not a very good screening tool.
There are articles about the differing opinions by neuroscientists working at Boston University about cause and effect. Stunt persons in the movie industry have repetitive traumatic events. What is the outcomes here? Is there a difference between males and females? Do jet pilots have issues with excessive G forces and altered blood flow to the brain? Even roller coasters have G forces and rotational accelerations which has been shown to play a greater role in brain insult than linear forces. Some have questioned the safety of rollercoasters.
There is a bias for researchers to sensationalize their research to obtain funding. It has happened before where researchers have altered results and conclusions for profit, either monitarily or for fame. It happens.
I just think there is too much opinion and not enough fact.

(01-23-2019 12:23 AM)ruowls Wrote:  

(01-22-2019 07:23 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  And, I dont see where a medical doctor, who has a Socratic oath to 'do no harm', could really be following that oath where the outcome would be so up in the air.

Legally, I think such a program, if not very sure of a positive outcome, would make many plaintiff's attorneys salivate like a dog eyeing a juicy steak on the counter.

I took the Hippocratic Oath once. Not sure about the Socratic Oath. Must be due to CTE.

I am joking by the way but it is the Hippocratic Oath.

Since the term Socratic is usually associated with the teaching of lawyers rather than doctors, we can rest assured that "do no harm" has nothing to do with it. :)

(01-23-2019 12:23 AM)ruowls Wrote:  

(01-22-2019 07:23 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(01-22-2019 07:09 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(01-20-2019 01:09 PM)franklyconfused Wrote:  

(01-19-2019 05:54 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Rugby coaches will insist that there is a simple way to reduce football injuries--take off the headgear.

With no helmet, players are a lot more aware of proper technique. Put it on, and they think they are invincible and can go spearing people with it.

There are (at this point admittedly isolated) places where rugby is growing as football declines because of the concussion issue.

I've heard this a lot, but I wonder if this is due in part to the fact that rugby doesn't have as much scrutiny because there's less money being thrown around. It also doesn't address the issue of rugby being far less likely to put a ball carrier in a position where there are defenders running full speed at them from in front and from behind at the same time (forward passes). Generally, a ball carrier in rugby is either in front of every defender or behind every defender, maybe with an exception for the full back that they can turn away from (turn the hits from front and back to side-on). A receiver on a crossing route is surrounded by line backers and safeties, and a running back through the line has to deal with linemen and linebackers. I'd like to see experiments where teams demonstrate American football with less or no padding to see if it's viable, but I'm not sold on it, yet.

Some questions for this board might be:

1) Would changes to the game of football, in particular, in order to further prevent/lessen risk of CTE (such as no helmets, etc...) help or hurt Rice's fortunes on the gridiron versus the present competition vis-a-vis where the program is now (has been for many decades, give or take?)

2) If the answer to 1) above is positive for our school, should we then work together in a more concerted (and public) effort with the world's largest Medical Center across the street (and within BRC) to help make it so?

3) Would helping with the "experiments" necessary to reduce these injuries/risks allow (finally) some significant additional millions from the academic budget (and dare I say, endowment) to legitimately flow directly to the athletic dept for the specific intent of improving football health (and then maybe the fortunes of our team on the field in terms of success, "moving the needle" as it were finally?)

4) And finally, would partnering in such manner with the Medical center personnel across the street help improve football attendance and interest as there would be a medical reason for those folks to attend, be interested in Rice's program specifically?

How ethical would such a study or experiment be? I am hardly any expert on medical ethics, but it would seem to me that the known danger is collision forces -- repeated collision forces.

Removing all or some portions of protective equipment -- seems rather hit or miss if that would expand or diminish protection from such repeated collision forces.

And, I dont see where a medical doctor, who has a Socratic oath to 'do no harm', could really be following that oath where the outcome would be so up in the air.

Legally, I think such a program, if not very sure of a positive outcome, would make many plaintiff's attorneys salivate like a dog eyeing a juicy steak on the counter.

I took the Hippocratic Oath once. Not sure about the Socratic Oath. Must be due to CTE.

I am joking by the way but it is the Hippocratic Oath.

heh... brain fart galore there. Since I was a non-athlete I really cant claim cte status....

(01-22-2019 12:55 AM)ruowls Wrote:  That brings up a problem with Title IX. Female athletes have a higher incidence of concussion than males for same activity type in some studies. It basically is saying being female in sport is a greater concussion risk. If they want to get rid of football, then by the same reasoning they need to get rid of female sports because it is “riskier”. Are they going to scrap Title IX because female athletes are more susceptible to concussion than males? Field hockey, ice hockey, soccer, and lacrosse all have concussion rates similar to football on the youth level with baseball and basketball not far behind. This doesn’t even count motor sports or biking or skiing. The youth sport with the greatest loss of participation and injuries requiring surgery is baseball. Are we going to ban it? Sport, like any activity has inherent risk. Life has inherent risk. Where do you draw the line on trying to avoid risk? The attack on football is out of proportion to the risk versus other youth activities. This is going to get messy due to the inherent risk in sports and people trying to make life “less risky”.

Do the studies account for the fact that 3 of those 4 sports do not generally use any form of head protection beyond eye protection?

ru:

I took the time to parse through the argument you make on CTE. Is it your position that dementia pugilistica is, in fact, not supported by the science?

You are correct that this particular tauopathy has the same issues of causation as Alzheimer's. But, the wide prevalence of this neuropathology with boxers seems very clear, does it not? Or is it your belief that the rates of CTE within the population at large is the same as for those whom undergo either repeated specific and sharp traumatic brain injury (Jerry Quarry) and/or more continuous yet milder repetitive brain injury (i.e. football, soccer)?

I mean, the link between boxing and the classic 'stepfather' of CTE has been pretty deeply documented for almost a century at this point, has it not?

(01-23-2019 02:47 PM)texd Wrote:  

(01-22-2019 12:55 AM)ruowls Wrote:  That brings up a problem with Title IX. Female athletes have a higher incidence of concussion than males for same activity type in some studies. It basically is saying being female in sport is a greater concussion risk. If they want to get rid of football, then by the same reasoning they need to get rid of female sports because it is “riskier”. Are they going to scrap Title IX because female athletes are more susceptible to concussion than males? Field hockey, ice hockey, soccer, and lacrosse all have concussion rates similar to football on the youth level with baseball and basketball not far behind. This doesn’t even count motor sports or biking or skiing. The youth sport with the greatest loss of participation and injuries requiring surgery is baseball. Are we going to ban it? Sport, like any activity has inherent risk. Life has inherent risk. Where do you draw the line on trying to avoid risk? The attack on football is out of proportion to the risk versus other youth activities. This is going to get messy due to the inherent risk in sports and people trying to make life “less risky”.

Do the studies account for the fact that 3 of those 4 sports do not generally use any form of head protection beyond eye protection?

The studies are all over the place.
Here are a couple results.

1) 5 year period for rate/1000 Athlete Exposures:
Female rate-Male rate Sport
6.3-3.4 Soccer
6.0-3.9 Basketball
3.3-0.5 Softball/baseball
0.3-0.5 Swimming and Diving

2) Rate/1000 AEs
Football 64
Hockey 54
Girls Soccer 33
Boys Lacrosse 40
Girls Lacrosse 31
Boys Soccer 19
Wrestling 22
Girls Basketball 18.6
Girls Softball 16
Boys Basketball 16
Field Hockey 22
Cheerleading 11
Girls Volleyball 6
Baseball 4.6
Gymnastics 7

3) A pooled analysis of 23 previously published studies from the British Journal of Sports Medicine from Nov. 2015.
Relative Risk/1000 AEs with the average for sport participation at 0.23.
Rugby 4.18
Ice Hockey 1.2
American Football 0.53
Volleyball 0.03
Baseball 0.06
Cheerleading 0.07

It is interesting that in this article, rugby was by far the worst sport with American football only double the relative risk from the average.
So according to this data, rugby is 8 times worse than football. And yet, on this board, football should be changed to be more like rugby.

(01-23-2019 04:09 PM)ruowls Wrote:  The studies are all over the place.
Here are a couple results.

1) 5 year period for rate/1000 Athlete Exposures:
Female rate-Male rate Sport
6.3-3.4 Soccer
6.0-3.9 Basketball
3.3-0.5 Softball/baseball
0.3-0.5 Swimming and Diving

2) Rate/1000 AEs
Football 64
Hockey 54
Girls Soccer 33
Boys Lacrosse 40
Girls Lacrosse 31
Boys Soccer 19
Wrestling 22
Girls Basketball 18.6
Girls Softball 16
Boys Basketball 16
Field Hockey 22
Cheerleading 11
Girls Volleyball 6
Baseball 4.6
Gymnastics 7

3) A pooled analysis of 23 previously published studies from the British Journal of Sports Medicine from Nov. 2015.
Relative Risk/1000 AEs with the average for sport participation at 0.23.
Rugby 4.18
Ice Hockey 1.2
American Football 0.53
Volleyball 0.03
Baseball 0.06
Cheerleading 0.07

It is interesting that in this article, rugby was by far the worst sport with American football only double the relative risk from the average.
So according to this data, rugby is 8 times worse than football. And yet, on this board, football should be changed to be more like rugby.

Are there any similar studies that include Aussie-Rules Football? They wear no head protection and run around at pretty high speeds. But I believe they also have rules against certain types of tackles, which might reduce their concussion rates.

(01-23-2019 04:29 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  

(01-23-2019 04:09 PM)ruowls Wrote:  The studies are all over the place.
Here are a couple results.

1) 5 year period for rate/1000 Athlete Exposures:
Female rate-Male rate Sport
6.3-3.4 Soccer
6.0-3.9 Basketball
3.3-0.5 Softball/baseball
0.3-0.5 Swimming and Diving

2) Rate/1000 AEs
Football 64
Hockey 54
Girls Soccer 33
Boys Lacrosse 40
Girls Lacrosse 31
Boys Soccer 19
Wrestling 22
Girls Basketball 18.6
Girls Softball 16
Boys Basketball 16
Field Hockey 22
Cheerleading 11
Girls Volleyball 6
Baseball 4.6
Gymnastics 7

3) A pooled analysis of 23 previously published studies from the British Journal of Sports Medicine from Nov. 2015.
Relative Risk/1000 AEs with the average for sport participation at 0.23.
Rugby 4.18
Ice Hockey 1.2
American Football 0.53
Volleyball 0.03
Baseball 0.06
Cheerleading 0.07

It is interesting that in this article, rugby was by far the worst sport with American football only double the relative risk from the average.
So according to this data, rugby is 8 times worse than football. And yet, on this board, football should be changed to be more like rugby.

Are there any similar studies that include Aussie-Rules Football? They wear no head protection and run around at pretty high speeds. But I believe they also have rules against certain types of tackles, which might reduce their concussion rates.

A quick check shows this:

Australian Rugby:
3.9 concussions/1000 hours for professional level
1.2/1000 hours amateur level

Australian Rules Football
5-6/1000 hours

Note it is reported differently with rate per 1000 hours played as opposed to rate per 1000 AEs (exposure is any time spent in practice or game counting as an exposure regardless of time).

Better just go hide in mama's basement (not sure where local kids are supposed to hide...not too many basements in the greater Houston area).

(01-23-2019 04:42 PM)ruowls Wrote:  

(01-23-2019 04:29 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  

(01-23-2019 04:09 PM)ruowls Wrote:  The studies are all over the place.
Here are a couple results.

1) 5 year period for rate/1000 Athlete Exposures:
Female rate-Male rate Sport
6.3-3.4 Soccer
6.0-3.9 Basketball
3.3-0.5 Softball/baseball
0.3-0.5 Swimming and Diving

2) Rate/1000 AEs
Football 64
Hockey 54
Girls Soccer 33
Boys Lacrosse 40
Girls Lacrosse 31
Boys Soccer 19
Wrestling 22
Girls Basketball 18.6
Girls Softball 16
Boys Basketball 16
Field Hockey 22
Cheerleading 11
Girls Volleyball 6
Baseball 4.6
Gymnastics 7

3) A pooled analysis of 23 previously published studies from the British Journal of Sports Medicine from Nov. 2015.
Relative Risk/1000 AEs with the average for sport participation at 0.23.
Rugby 4.18
Ice Hockey 1.2
American Football 0.53
Volleyball 0.03
Baseball 0.06
Cheerleading 0.07

It is interesting that in this article, rugby was by far the worst sport with American football only double the relative risk from the average.
So according to this data, rugby is 8 times worse than football. And yet, on this board, football should be changed to be more like rugby.

Are there any similar studies that include Aussie-Rules Football? They wear no head protection and run around at pretty high speeds. But I believe they also have rules against certain types of tackles, which might reduce their concussion rates.

A quick check shows this:

Australian Rugby:
3.9 concussions/1000 hours for professional level
1.2/1000 hours amateur level

Australian Rules Football
5-6/1000 hours

Note it is reported differently with rate per 1000 hours played as opposed to rate per 1000 AEs (exposure is any time spent in practice or game counting as an exposure regardless of time).

Thanks for looking up those figures.

(01-23-2019 07:00 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  Better just go hide in mama's basement (not sure where local kids are supposed to hide...not too many basements in the greater Houston area).

From an insurance perspective, another option is to scrap organized youth sports and have kids just play pick-up games. It might not be safer, but it would almost certainly be aerobically and socially healthier, and without any adults around to pin liability on, it would be harder for people to sue.

The sad tale of former Texas All-American Tommy Nobis is another blow against football

Before CTE diagnosis, Tommy Nobis’ family was troubled by his behavior

Thanks GoodOwl. Sad reading those accounts.
Those of us of a certain age who lived in Texas during his dominant time at UT remember what an incredible force he was on the field.
The connection of repetitive head trauma and dementia in professional football players seems undeniable and I have to believe that, ultimately, the game will change fundamentally as a result of the huge and inevitable liability costs that will be born by the teams.

(01-29-2019 08:55 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  Thanks GoodOwl. Sad reading those accounts.
Those of us of a certain age who lived in Texas during his dominant time at UT remember what an incredible force he was on the field.
The connection of repetitive head trauma and dementia in professional football players seems undeniable and I have to believe that, ultimately, the game will change fundamentally as a result of the huge and inevitable liability costs that will be born by the teams.

You're welcome, greyowl. It was very sad reading those articles. As the Super Bowl coverage ism covering all local aspects, and Nobis was the first Falcon drafted, it is conflicting to read this kind of account, and yet still be interested in the game.

I think an issue related to CTE I've seen noted elsewhere is that in the "old days", players were generally smaller and somewhat slower, and so many of the collisions and cumulative collisions in football were not as severely damaging as perhaps they are today. Even if they went to the old-style soft helmets of yesteryear, the sheer size and physique o0f the athletes today would still make the game dangerous as far as the CTE issues, maybe moreso. Unless the artificial supersizing of those who choose to play is somehow mitigated, the game will likely continue to cause these kinds of issues.

I will say that I am not nearly as enamored of the pro game as I once was, partially due to these issues. The college game, with the "divide" in level of play with the bigger, stronger athletes going to the big schools mostly, is not quite as fun to follow as I once found it. RUOwls and others have brought up interesting talking points, but I'm not sure exactly where the answer lies. It will take more combined research and efforts on multiple levels. That is why/where I see Rice as possibly having an opportunity to make a difference with its location across from the Med Center. I'm sure our smart lawyers can help resolve any liability issues so that overall safety can be improved through researching solutions.

(01-30-2019 09:54 AM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(01-29-2019 08:55 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  Thanks GoodOwl. Sad reading those accounts.
Those of us of a certain age who lived in Texas during his dominant time at UT remember what an incredible force he was on the field.
The connection of repetitive head trauma and dementia in professional football players seems undeniable and I have to believe that, ultimately, the game will change fundamentally as a result of the huge and inevitable liability costs that will be born by the teams.

You're welcome, greyowl. It was very sad reading those articles. As the Super Bowl coverage ism covering all local aspects, and Nobis was the first Falcon drafted, it is conflicting to read this kind of account, and yet still be interested in the game.

I think an issue related to CTE I've seen noted elsewhere is that in the "old days", players were generally smaller and somewhat slower, and so many of the collisions and cumulative collisions in football were not as severely damaging as perhaps they are today. Even if they went to the old-style soft helmets of yesteryear, the sheer size and physique o0f the athletes today would still make the game dangerous as far as the CTE issues, maybe moreso. Unless the artificial supersizing of those who choose to play is somehow mitigated, the game will likely continue to cause these kinds of issues.

I will say that I am not nearly as enamored of the pro game as I once was, partially due to these issues. The college game, with the "divide" in level of play with the bigger, stronger athletes going to the big schools mostly, is not quite as fun to follow as I once found it. RUOwls and others have brought up interesting talking points, but I'm not sure exactly where the answer lies. It will take more combined research and efforts on multiple levels. That is why/where I see Rice as possibly having an opportunity to make a difference with its location across from the Med Center. I'm sure our smart lawyers can help resolve any liability issues so that overall safety can be improved through researching solutions.

Obviously, I am a strong proponent for making all sports as safe as possible. The problem I have is that some have sensationalized the topic to promote their agenda.
The article starts out talking about the decline of Tommy in his older years and attributes it to CTE caused from football. It states that a postmortem analysis of his brain from Boston University showed Grade 4 CTE. In my opinion, there is no standard on what CTE is let alone grading it. It is a subjective report of findings that they arbitrarily made. These are similar finding seen in Lewy Body disease, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's Dementia. There isn't a Grade 4 Alzheimer's scale even though you may have similar findings. I question what an Alzheimer's brain without repetitive trauma would score on the CTE scale. There just isn't enough known. People are inherently cause and effect thinkers. We want to attribute effect to a cause. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is hard. This is one of those hard times. The article also jumped to 3 people with ALS and tried to say football caused ALS in these cases. It included one who was a lawyer and is convinced his football career caused it. Again, there is no evidence that football causes ALS and yet the media throws it out there to sensationalize the story to sway public opinion.
Professional football in America is a big business. There is both money and public attention on it. Professional rugby in Australia not as much of either.
I understand that there could be issues that need to be dealt with. I also see that there are unsubstantiated claims that are being made simply to further one's opinion.

(01-30-2019 03:36 PM)ruowls Wrote:  It states that a postmortem analysis of his brain from Boston University showed Grade 4 CTE. In my opinion, there is no standard on what CTE is let alone grading it.

RU, below is some info on where they may have been coming from.

Here's a news release about Ann McKee, director of Boston University's CTE Center (and professor of neurology and pathology at the School of Medicine, and the associate director of BU’s Alzheimer’s Disease Center), who was being honored by the Alzheimer’s Association for, among other achievements, creating "the 'McKee criteria' for diagnosing CTE and establish(ing) its four progressive stages."

http://www.bu.edu/today/2018/ann-mckee-l...ent-award/

The release contains links to two technical papers:

"Current Understanding of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy" ( Curr Treat Options Neurol. 2014 Sep; 16(9): 306. doi: 10.1007/s11940-014-0306-5 ) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255271/

(Table 1 Describes proposed neuropathologic staging of CTE from "The spectrum of disease in chronic traumatic encephalopathy" by McKee et al in Brain. 2013;136(Pt 1):43–64. doi:10.1093/brain/aws307 .)

and

"The first NINDS/NIBIB consensus meeting to define neuropathological criteria for the diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy" ( Acta Neuropathol. 2016; 131: 75–86. Published online 2015 Dec 14. doi: 10.1007/s00401-015-1515-z ) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4698281/

(01-30-2019 05:47 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  

(01-30-2019 03:36 PM)ruowls Wrote:  It states that a postmortem analysis of his brain from Boston University showed Grade 4 CTE. In my opinion, there is no standard on what CTE is let alone grading it.

RU, below is some info on where they may have been coming from.

Here's a news release about Ann McKee, director of Boston University's CTE Center (and professor of neurology and pathology at the School of Medicine, and the associate director of BU’s Alzheimer’s Disease Center), who was being honored by the Alzheimer’s Association for, among other achievements, creating "the 'McKee criteria' for diagnosing CTE and establish(ing) its four progressive stages."

http://www.bu.edu/today/2018/ann-mckee-l...ent-award/

The release contains links to two technical papers:

"Current Understanding of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy" ( Curr Treat Options Neurol. 2014 Sep; 16(9): 306. doi: 10.1007/s11940-014-0306-5 ) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255271/

(Table 1 Describes proposed neuropathologic staging of CTE from "The spectrum of disease in chronic traumatic encephalopathy" by McKee et al in Brain. 2013;136(Pt 1):43–64. doi:10.1093/brain/aws307 .)

and

"The first NINDS/NIBIB consensus meeting to define neuropathological criteria for the diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy" ( Acta Neuropathol. 2016; 131: 75–86. Published online 2015 Dec 14. doi: 10.1007/s00401-015-1515-z ) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4698281/

Thanks Mike.

That is one of the points I was trying to make. Dr. McKee created the CTE stages. These stages are similar to the progressive findings of Alzheimer's. It is a gradation of the amount of tau tangles in certain regions of the brain. In other words, it is a variation of the Alzheimer's findings. The findings of plaques and tangles was first found in a post mortem brain in 1906 by Alois Alzheimer in a 51 year old German woman.
The neurodegenerative diseases are defined as those that involve the neurofibrillary tangles which has since been identified as the hyperphosphorylated tau protein. The phosphorylation causes the protein to tangle and destabilize the microtubules of the axon which causes the loss of dendritic-axonal communication and subsequent death of the neuron. The causes and triggers of this molecular injury is what is unknown.
Alzheimer's affects approximately 47.5 million people worldwide and has approximately 3 million new cases in the US. It is very common. The group at Boston University, led by Dr. McKee, has done follow up on 600 brains. They have tweaked the neurodegenerative research to fit their interpretation of CTE. It still isn't established that CTE is a separate entity or just a variation of the neurodegenerative process. Dr. Peter Cummings is a forensic neuropathologist who worked at Boston University and has questioned the conclusions and opinions of Dr. McKee and her associates at Boston University. As an example, one study done by Boston University showed youth sports could increase risk for CTE. However, a similar study done at Vanderbilt University showed no such risk and failed to validate the Boston University study. The lead author from Boston University went on record to state that youth sports should be eliminated based on his findings......findings that were refuted by another university. The media has used his study and claims to attack youth contact sports but the their findings were not reproducible and as such their claims should be taken with skepticism.
Google the top neurodegenerative disease researchers and you will not find Dr. McKee or Boston University among them. Google CTE and you see Boston University pop up and that they claim to be the leaders in CTE research. Well, yeah. They are the ones who made it up. Many of the findings attributed to CTE have been reported for over 100 years. UT Southwestern Medical School has done significant research on tau protein propagation in the brain and that certain variations of gene expression of the tau protein may determine where in the brain it concentrates and thus predispose one to one of the subsets of neurodegenerative disease.
I probably went to deep into this but there are neuroscientists who don't agree with the position of Dr. McKee and the group at Boston University.
And, route running and passing game coordination can be just as deep and varied.

Stanford lineman Branson Bragg to retire from football, citing concussion and mental health issues

(01-23-2019 12:23 AM)ruowls Wrote:  I took the Hippocratic Oath once. Not sure about the Socratic Oath. Must be due to CTE.

I am joking by the way but it is the Hippocratic Oath.