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BU has done another statistical analysis of the brains that have been donated to them...
Scientists were already concerned about kids playing tackle football. It’s worse than they thought.
This week, Boston University researchers published a study that is sure to fire up parents worried about letting their kids play football: The earlier people played tackle football, researchers concluded, the sooner they could experience behavioral and emotional issues later in life.
The study, published in the Annals of Neurology on Monday, showed that those who played tackle football before 12 years old experienced those symptoms, on average, 13 years earlier than those who played the sport after that age. In interviews with friends and family members of 246 football players who have died, researchers discovered that for every year earlier these athletes played football, they reported experiencing cognitive, mood, and behavioral issues about two half and years earlier. Of the 246 football players whose brains were donated to the BU study, 211 of them had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated hits to the head.
Scientists were already concerned about kids playing tackle football. It’s worse than they thought.