CTE first found in female professional athlete

For the first time, the degenerative brain disease CTE has been diagnosed in a female professional athlete, researchers reported.

Heather Anderson, an Australian soccer player who died last year, was found to have had CTE, researchers said in a paper published in Acta Neuropathologica.

“As the representation of women in professional contact sports grows, it seems likely that more CTE cases will be diagnosed in female athletes,” the report said. “Given women’s greater susceptibility to concussions, there is an urgent need to recognize the risks and put strategies and policies in place to minimize traumatic brain injuries in increasingly popular female contact sports.”

Anderson started playing Australian rules football when she was 5 years old, eventually competing in the top women’s league for the Adelaide Crows. She retired in 2017 at the age of 23 after a shoulder injury. She committed suicide, her family said, at the age of 28. She had one confirmed concussion in her career, and as many as four others suspected by her family but not formally diagnosed.

“It was a surprise, but not a surprise,” said her father, Brian, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation program 7.30 of the diagnosis. “And I think now that this report has been published, I’m trying to think about how it could play out for female athletes everywhere.”

CTE can eventually lead to depression, memory loss, and personality changes, including aggressive behavior. It gets worse the longer an athlete competes in contact sports. The condition can only be diagnosed posthumously; Anderson’s family donated her brain to the Australian Sports Brain Bank for research.

Researchers found three lesions on Anderson’s brain. They pointed to early stage CTE, which was to be expected given her young age.

The vast majority of CTE cases occur in men, especially those who have participated in contact sports for many years. including American football players Junior Seau, Ken Stabler, Frank Gifford, Mike Webster and Andre Waters. as well as boxers and Australian football and rugby players. Aaron Hernandez, the NFL player who was convicted of murder in 2015 and died by suicide at age 27, was found to have severe CTE damage, like that of a player in his 60s.

The researchers said only a handful of cases had previously been found in women, and none previously in a professional athlete.

Women’s contact sports, particularly rugby, are booming in many regions. An Australian top women’s competition began in 2017; Anderson played in the competition’s first major final.