Association of Position Played and Career Duration and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy at Autopsy in Elite Football and Hockey Players
Nicole Schwab, Richard Wennberg, Karl Grenier, Maria Carmela Tartaglia, Charles H. Tator, Lili‐Naz Hazrati
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To determine whether an association exists between career duration or position played and the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at autopsy in a series of elite football and hockey players. METHODS: This retrospective cohort study analyzed postmortem brains of 35 former football or hockey players (29 professional, 6 university varsity/major junior), with the presence of CTE at autopsy as the primary outcome. Position played (highest level), age at retirement (indicator of lifetime exposure to sport), and hockey fighting/penalization histories (surrogate marker for role/style of play) were collected. A blinded neuropathologic evaluation of each participant was performed, providing an assessment for neurodegenerative diseases including CTE, based on the 2015 National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineeringconsensus paper. RESULTS: > 0.5, Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon). In 24 of 35 cases (68.6%), other neuropathologies were present, 13 of 24 (54.2%) of which were coexistent with CTE. CONCLUSION: In this cohort of 35 former collision sports athletes, no significant associations were found between career duration, position or role played, and CTE presence at autopsy. Although limited by the small and nonrepresentative sample studied, these findings suggest that nonsport factors may be important to understand differing susceptibilities among athletes to CTE.