CTE diagnosed in a professional female athlete for the first time

Content Disclaimer: This story contains depictions of suicide. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day at 1-800-273-8255.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE, has been widely linked to men who have played American football. But it’s not just a male disease.

Scientists from the Australian Sports Brain Bank announced on Monday that Heather Anderson, a former Australian rules soccer player, has become the first professional female athlete to be diagnosed with CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated traumatic brain injury. .

Anderson’s family donated her brain to the ASBB after she took her own life in 2022 aged 28. She has played contact sports (Australian rules and rugby league) most of her life, and after years in the youth leagues she was drafted into the women’s league. Australian Football League in 2016. Numerous injuries – including a confirmed concussion which required her to wear a helmet – saw her retire after just one season. She then became a military doctor.

Athletes in high-contact sports like American and Australian football, hockey, rugby, boxing, and MMA are particularly at risk of developing CTE. But due to the small number of high-contact professional sports for women and the global publicity of the NFL’s CTE scandal, the CTE has largely focused on men. But according to ASBB director Michael Buckland, CTE looks no different in a woman’s brain than it does in a man’s.

“There were multiple CTE lesions as well as abnormalities almost everywhere I looked in his cortex. It was indistinguishable from the dozens of male cases I saw,” Buckland said.

Chris Nowinski, CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, told Al-Jazeera that Anderson’s “historic” diagnosis should be a “wake-up call for women’s sport”.