CTE and contact sports have been much in the news. In 2017, an MR imaging study in Radiology showed that playing position and career duration contribute to white matter damage in former college and professional football players who suffered recurrent head impacts.

"Our findings may be useful in helping to develop prediction models for later-life neurodegenerative changes based on several factors, including playing position," Kevin Guskiewicz, research director for the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told HCB News at the time.


Although the present work suggests that risks of dementia may be overstated, TBI does happen to contact sports athletes at a high rate. In 2016, results from the use of diffusion tensor MR imaging revealed that over 40 percent of retired National Football League (NFL) players had signs of TBI, according to a large-scale study released at the American Academy of Neurology’s 68th Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

“This is one of the largest studies to date in living retired NFL players and one of the first to demonstrate significant objective evidence for traumatic brain injury in these former players,” Dr. Francis X. Conidi, the study's author said in a statement. “The rate of traumatic brain injury was significantly higher in the players than that found in the general population.”

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