CANBERRA: A former Australian rules footballer has become the first known female athlete in the world to be diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease possibly caused by concussions, reported Xinhua.
In a study published on Tuesday, researchers from the Australian Sports Brain Bank found that Heather Anderson was suffering from “low-stage” chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at the time of her death by suicide at the age of 28 in 2022.
Anderson played eight games for the Adelaide Crows in the elite Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW) competition in 2017 where she became known for wearing a bright pink helmet.
After winning the first AFLW Grand Final with Adelaide, Anderson retired from the sport to return to work as an army medic.
Following her death, Anderson’s family donated her brain to the research centre for study to better understand why she died.
CTE is a degenerative disorder associated with repeated head injuries. It is also associated with the development of dementia that is linked to an increased risk of mental illness.
It is common among men who played contact sports professionally but had never before been diagnosed in a female athlete.
“While we’ve been finding CTE in males for quite some time, I think this is really the tip of the iceberg and it’s a real red flag that now women are participating in contact sport just as men are, that we are going to start seeing more and more CTE cases in women,” Michael Buckland, director of the brain bank and co-author of the report, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
A Senate inquiry into concussions and repeated head trauma in contact sports is set to publish its final report in August.
In its submission to the inquiry, the AFL, Australia’s biggest sport league, acknowledged the link between head trauma and CTE, while doctor groups, researchers and neurologists called for more funding, research, education and consistent guidelines on head injuries across all sports. –BERNAMA-XINHUA
