A major NFL brain study puts new numbers on the burden of CTE

By tracking every identified former NFL player who died over 14 years and examining hundreds of donated brains, researchers sought to overcome a long-standing challenge in estimating the true burden of CTE.

Study: Prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy at death in National Football League players: retrospective population based cohort study, 2008-21. Image Credit: Steeve Raye / Shutterstock

In a recent study published in The BMJ, researchers conducted a retrospective population-based investigation to evaluate the prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at death and its clinicopathological association with dementia among former National Football League (NFL) players.

Researchers specifically analyzed postmortem neuropathology and National Death Index records from a fully enumerated cohort comprising all 1,712 identified former NFL players who died between 2008 and 2021. Study findings revealed that, under the most conservative epidemiological assumptions, the minimum prevalence of CTE at death was 18.5% across the entire study period, with the minimum reaching 24.5% during 2016–2021, when brain donation was most frequent.