Australian Brain Bank Finds CTE in 31 of 51 Donated Rugby League Players, Including One Who Died at 20

A study presented this week at the International Sports Concussion Conference in Melbourne found that 31 of 51 donated rugby league brains showed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which said it obtained the findings ahead of the presentation.

The cases span amateur and professional players in their 20s, 30s and 40s, according to ABC News (Australia). CTE can only be diagnosed after death, by examining brain tissue for the buildup of a protein called tau.

The numbers come from the Australian Sports Brain Bank's first 150 brain examinations of contact-sport athletes overall, the ABC reported. The paper was presented by molecular biologist and data scientist Jennifer Cropley.

Among those identified: former NRL player and coach Paul Green, who died by suicide in 2022 at age 49, and Manly Sea Eagles player Keith Titmuss, who died in 2020 at age 20 after a training session in extreme heat, according to the ABC and The Independent.

Paul Green's widow, Amanda Green, is calling on all collision sports to do more to protect players and is urging more people to pledge their brains for research. "Now that we know what we do about this disease I feel a massive responsibility, as we all should, to protect the brain health of the next generation of young athletes," she told the ABC. She said she had no idea what CTE was until after her husband's diagnosis.

Swinburne University associate professor Alan Pearce is recommending that contact be banned in junior football codes until age 14, according to Ground News' aggregation of the coverage.

The ABC reported that domestic outlets, including The Australian newspaper, said the conference barred reporters from attending the session where the findings were presented. That restriction wasn't explained in the available coverage, and no outlet reported why organizers closed the presentation to press.

The NFL Numbers Tell a Similar Story

Across the Pacific, a study published in The BMJ and covered by Fox News and Breitbart found comparable patterns among former NFL players. Researchers from Mass General Brigham, Boston University and the Concussion & CTE Foundation examined 235 donated brains out of 878 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021.

Of those 235 donated brains, 215 had CTE, a rate of 91.4 percent, according to Breitbart's reporting on the study. Of the CTE-positive brains, 61.3 percent also met clinical criteria for dementia.

Because only a fraction of the 878 deceased players donated their brains, researchers translated that into a population-wide estimate. Applied across everyone who died in that six-year window, whether they donated or not, the study put prevalence at somewhere between 24.5 percent and 97.7 percent, with the true number likely somewhere in between, according to Breitbart. Fox News led with the lower, more conservative figure, framing it as "1 in 4" NFL players facing eventual CTE.

An NFL spokesperson told CBS News the league continues working to make the game safer and has expanded resources for former players' physical and mental health.

The Fair Question About the Numbers

Brain donation isn't random. Families overwhelmingly donate a loved one's brain to science when that person showed symptoms: memory loss, mood swings, erratic behavior while playing or after retiring. Families of players who died with no such symptoms have far less reason to donate.

That means the 60 percent figure in the Australian rugby league sample and the 91.4 percent figure in the raw NFL donor sample are almost certainly inflated compared to the true rate across every person who ever played the sport. The researchers themselves acknowledge this. It's exactly why the NFL study gave a wide range, 24.5 to 97.7 percent, rather than a single number, and why the ABC described the rugby findings as drawn only from the pool of people who chose to donate.

Selection bias makes prevalence hard to pin down precisely, but it doesn't erase the disease in the brains that were examined. Thirty-one real people had CTE. A 20-year-old training in extreme heat had CTE. Those facts stand regardless of what the broader denominator looks like.

CTE's cause, repetitive hits to the head and body, is not seriously disputed among the researchers cited in this coverage. What remains unestablished, as the ABC noted, is any direct causal link between CTE and suicide. Experts say more research is needed there specifically.

The Australian Sports Brain Bank's findings followed a Four Corners investigation in June that found 33 Australian Rules football players had CTE, according to Ground News' summary of related coverage. Amanda Green's appeal for more brain donations, and the unexplained press restriction at this week's Melbourne conference, both remain open threads for future reporting.