Duerson’s brain shows signs of CTE
5/9/2011 by LegalView under Traumatic Brain InjuryIn February, former Chicago Bears safety David Duerson shot himself in the chest, leaving behind a note that asked that his brain be given to the NFL’s brain bank. Duerson’s wish was that his brain be studied for evidence of a certain disease striking athletes.
After studying Duerson’s brain, scientists found that Duerson’s brain tissue showed “moderately advanced” evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy and no other evidence of other disease. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE is a dementia-like brain disease afflicting athletes exposed to repeated brain trauma. CTE can affect the areas that control judgment, inhibition, impulse control, mood and memory.
CTE has been linked to the brains of 14 of 15 former NFL players that have been studied. All of the cases had one thing in common, repeated concussions and sub-concussive blows to the head or both. The picture beginning to emerge from these cases is that trauma could be causing brain damage.
Duerson suffered a minimum of 10 known concussions during the course of his career.
Tags: Brain Injuries, Brain Injury, Traumatic Brain Injury
This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2011 at 10:33 am and is filed under Traumatic Brain Injury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[...] Duerson’s brain shows signs of CTE Take this Seriously [...]