Severe brain damage
Hernandez’s advanced trauma ‘very unusual’ for young player
Former Patriots player Aaron Hernandez suffered severe damage to his brain from sports-related head injuries, with deterioration that is known to impede decision-making and cause aggression, according to a Boston University researcher who announced the pathology results yesterday.
“In any individual, we can’t take the pathology and explain the behavior,” said Dr. Ann McKee, director of the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center and chief of neuropathology for the VA Boston Healthcare System.
Hernandez’s brain showed signs of Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease that has been strongly linked to contact sports like football. It was also found in the brain of Pats linebacker Junior Seau, who killed himself in 2012.
“But we can say collectively, in our collective experience, that individuals with CTE, and CTE of this severity, have difficulty with impulse control, decision-making, inhibition or impulses or aggression, often emotional volatility and rage behavior,” McKee said.
She presented the postmortem study to a conference room full of researchers and media yesterday at Boston University, using actual images of the former player’s brain showing extreme tissue loss with evidence of “microbleeds” associated with head trauma.
“These are very unusual findings for someone so young,” she said.
The mean age of American football players with Stage 3 CTE — out of four stages — is 67.
That level of CTE has so far only been seen in players at least 20 years older than Hernandez.
The condition of Hernandez’s brain had slowly developed over a long period of time, McKee said, estimating it probably took about 10 years for that level of deterioration to be reached.
She added that Hernandez carried a gene that made him more susceptible to neurological damage, potentially contributing to his condition.
“Every place that we looked, it was classic CTE,” she said.
The BU center has pioneered the study of NFL players’ brains, finding severe damage caused by repeated concussions.
Hernandez, 27, committed suicide earlier this year in his Massachusetts prison cell, where he was serving a life sentence for murder. Days before, he had been acquitted of two other murders. Lawyers for his estate have contended he suffered brain damage during his time playing football and are suing the NFL.
Although Hernandez died by hanging, McKee said that would have little or no effect on the appearance of the brain postmortem. If anything, she said, it would cause slight swelling and minimize the appearance of tissue loss.
Attorney George J. Leontire, a member of the Hernandez legal team, did not comment on the findings.
McKee said Hernandez’s brain, given the extent of the CTE and his age, “has been one of the most significant contributions to our work. ... We’re hoping this will advance medical science in a very significant way.”