A debate on CTE evidence

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Alzheimer’s-like brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy is probably the most alarming outcome of repetitive blows to the head.

But how good is the evidence?

Iron clad, according to Robert Cantu, co-director of the Boston University Center for the Study of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, which a spokeswoman said had not received National Football League funding since 2010.

“In my mind, there’s a 100 percent connection,” said Dr. Cantu, who is also a neurosurgeon and author. “The one constant in every case of CTE has been a history of repetitive head traumas, including subconcussive hits.”

Among the long-term problems of hits to the head is CTE, which was identified in retired Steelers center Mike Webster in 2002 — a first for a professional football player. Symptoms of the degenerative disease can arise years, even decades after the last hit to the head, with symptoms that include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment and dementia, according to the Boston Center.

It’s not just professional football players who are at risk. Seventeen-year-old high school running back Nathan Stiles of Spring Hill, Kansas, became the youngest person ever diagnosed with CTE at the Boston University center.

Not everyone agrees the science is settled.

On the Steelers official team website, UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Clinic Director Michael “Micky” Collins urges parents to get the best information about concussions.

Speaking at a videoconference for doctors, nurses and others at the University of Arkansas in May in Fayetteville, Mr. Collins addressed the “presumably bad outcomes from concussion,” telling attendees from around that state that the “science is not pure enough to know that concussions are causing these problems.”

“There could be a whole host of other things causing these injuries,” he said. “There’s no connection in the literature between concussions and CTE.

“There’s just so much biased stuff out there right now.”