this **** is all anecdotal, yeah you have thugs like hernandez and screwed up people just like in any population. meanwhile wes welker and luke keuchly are walking concussions who manage not to start bar fights

You could argue the same thing about certain medications or alcohol. Are you saying that they cannot cause some people to get violent, just because others do not react the same way?

It would be interesting to find out if AH had violent tendencies before he began playing football.

CTE found in player while alive

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/16/he...-bn/index.html

It was found in 2012 and confirmed upon autopsy when he died in 2015.

NFL is definitely going to tumble.

Unsurprising that ESPN didn't write anything about this.

I thought the only way to confirm CTE was to get a sample of brain tissue after the subject had died?

It was, that’s why this is news.

http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/...agnosed-living

The significance of this study isn't that they found cte in a living patient- it's that they supposedly found a way to diagnose patients with cte while alive.

This study is really shady and wrought with problems though. I would wait until it's reproduced independently to trust it. I also need to read up on wjat has been previously published on this marker.

Did you read the study? It was published in a reputable journal. Why do you say the study is really shady, and what problems was it wrought with?

Yeah, so basically,
-The whole paper is about a protein called tau. This protein is found in the brains in all people. In people with certain neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and CTE, tau starts sticking to itself and forms huge aggregates. Whether these aggregates cause brain cells to die, or they're just a symptom of disease is not 100% established. It's at least partially the former tho.

-In this paper, they are trying to establish a method for identifying these aggregates in living patients, which is difficult to do. They use a method called [F-18]FDDNP-PET, which combines PET(positron emission tomography, which is like MRI and is already widely used) and FDDNP, which is some sort of dye that attaches to tau. When they do PET after administering FDDNP to patients, they can allegedly see where the FDDNP is, and therefore where tau is.

-They took a former NFL player and used FDDNP-PET on them. ~4 years later, the person died. They then took the guys brain and looked at where tau really was, to see if it matched with the FDDNP-PET scans.

The ethical problems are:
-The researchers have a patent on FDDNP, so it's in their best interest to push it as a diagnostic tool. They stand to make both research funding and private profits through the patent.

-They gave the report to CNN's Sanjay Gupta before the paper was published. Gupta is a known shill, and was almost certainly paid by the researchers to push this paper onto CNN.

The problems with the paper are:
-It's a case study, so only a N of 1.

-The correlation between the FDDNP-PET and postmortem tau was rs = 0.592, P = .0202. That's ok, but certainly not "highly correlated" as they say. also, it just squeaks by the significant threshold of p=.05. It's very likely that FDDNP stains other things besides tau, so it's not a great diagnostic tool.

-We don't know how much of the tau was formed in the 52 months between the scan and when the player died.

-all the CTE diagnostic methods are done via the researchers themselves, or through anecdotal evidence through the person's family members.

-The person allegedly had CTE symptoms at the time of the scan, 4+years before he died. So it was already too late to perform interventions and administer medications and therapies to this person. How good is a diagnostic test if it's already too late to do anything about the diagnosis?


That's the jist of it, but there are other problems with the paper. If the data is reliable, it's a step in the right direction because it's a way to diagnose patients for future studies.

Sounds like a pretty good study so far

the same ethical problem is present in literally every drug and medical device that is patented.

This is an extremely serious claim and I really doubt this is the case. There isn't really an ethical concern with trying to publicize results by contacting science journalists, sending them advance manuscripts, etc. Of course if they pay those journalists there's a problem. But you're just making stuff up here.

This is only a problem if the authors try to present it as if it was not a preliminary result. As far as I can see they have not.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. They'd have to establish diagnostic guidelines and do double blind studies on the implementation of those guidelines on football players/non football players. The correlation isn't really the important part, the important part is how often to the diagnostic guidelines that they set up lead to false positives and negatives in the double blind study. Obviously this would be a colossal undertaking as the study would have to have (I'm guessing) tens of thousands of football/non football volunteers to get enough data (which necessarily involves them dying) to see how reliable the diagnostic guidelines are.

These are all bizarre nits to pick that are only valid if the researchers aren't presenting this as a preliminary first step. Which it seems like they are?

Was not expecting such an informative post after the start of "so basically".

Nice work

The local radio host this morning said kids are better off smoking cigarettes than playing football

Guy probably second-hand smokes his kids

Or seeing Shimmy.

But stellar post.

seems correct

Not sure it was designed to be a literal statement. Nothing more than a comparison said to emphasize the danger of the sport to those who think it isn't.

https://deadspin.com/the-army-navy-g...-ti-1821129058

He went back in after this, coughed up blood, then was taken out. How the **** can you see this and send him back in

They didn't see it. The initial evaluation doesn't necessarily look at replays.
http://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/p...s-major-issues

The referee was right there and saw it all. The rules should allow him to force the player off the field for a medical evaluation in such a situation, and allow him to keep the player off the field until he is convinced that the player has medical clearance. The doctors need to work for someone other than the team, e.g. the player's union.

I thought independent (not player's union employed tho) neurologists were the ones who made the call to yank a player from a game?

when ppl finally realize that not watching also hurts Roger's bottomline it will be game over for the nfl.

Can't they? I feel like I've seen referees send players to the sideline before.

Pretty sure they do and that's what is entailed in the concussion protocol, otherwise majority of players would likely try and stay on.

In regards to medical staff not watching the replays of what caused them to have to come off I assumed they did, and am partially stunned they don't but sadly it's not that surprising

Heard on Mike and What'shisface this morning that while TV ratings are down for the NFL, revenues are way way up, almost double what they were six years ago or maybe it was more than double. Verizon just inked a huge deal to provide digital content or some such. The beast seems to be getting stronger, not weaker. Streams may need to be crossed to take it down.