Concerns about the long-term impacts of concussion and head injury have become prominent in recent years, particularly among participants and stakeholders of contact and collision sports. Many people have been left wondering about the risk of head injury in sport and whether it is safe to continue to play. People are especially worried about what is commonly known as CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy).
A 2022 publication claimed repetitive head impacts in contact and collision sports were the cause of CTE. This article has been influential, with other researchers citing the work and several people using it as evidence in an Australian Senate inquiry into concussions and repeated head trauma in contact sports. The headlines from that article—stating a definitive cause had been established—prompted us to take a deep dive into the work.
The result of our investigation has recently been published in the journal Sports Medicine . The gray area of chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE refers to a pathology where microscopic changes in tissue can be seen by neuropathologists when looking at slides from autopsied brains. While attempts have been made to further define CTE, there remains debate about what the different observed changes in the brain mean.
The challenge of agreement on CTE was highlighted in a 2021 publication when the United States' national institutes of neurological disorders and stroke, and biomedical imaging and bioengineering, brought experts together to es.