Brain disease found in Australian rugby league players

Post-mortem examinations have found a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head in two elite Australian rugby league players, the first cases found in the sport, researchers said yesterday. The researchers said the players both had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has been widely diagnosed among former US National Football League (NFL) players but is little studied elsewhere.

The Sydney-based study said the condition, once known as ‘punch drunk syndrome’ occurred when repeated brain trauma led to a long-term decline in cognitive function. They said the two unnamed subjects were both middle-aged former professionals who had played more than 150 National Rugby League (NRL) games each.

The study said there were no other known cases of CTE among rugby league players and there had only been one reported previously involving an Australian athlete, who played the closely related code of rugby union. It said they were the only cases of CTE the neuropathology department at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital had identified among 470 brain autopsies.

“It is difficult to assess whether these two CTE cases are serendipitous findings or emblematic of a more common issue with rugby league and other Australian football codes,” said the finding, published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica Communications.