ABSTRACT
Mike Webster, former center for the Pittsburg Steelers’ NFL team, was nicknamed ‘Iron Mike’ for his ability to play through any injury. Ironically, this ability may have contributed to his early death at age 50 after battling dementia, depression, chronic pain, and heart disease. It is estimated that over the course of his 25-year career in football, Webster acquired damage through repeated concussions equivalent to about 25,000 car accidents. Featured in the 2015 movie Concussion, Webster’s brain, as well as those of many other NFL players and high-impact athletes, showed pathology that paralleled advanced cases of dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinsonism, and dementia pugilistica, or ‘punch drunk syndrome’. Facing resistance from the NFL, innumerable other athletes have been potentially subject to this newly identified dementia, now called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which arises as a result of repeated or compound head injuries. Though a single concussion may not leave a highly significant mark on the brain, it is now known that repeated head injuries, no matter how small, compound on one another and multiply in severity, leaving diffuse damage throughout the brain. Symptoms vary highly from one case to another, meaning that while one individual may show signs and pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, like tau-protein tangles, another may show more Parkinsonian pathology, such as Lewy bodies and dopamine dysfunction. Webster’s son now serves as an advocate for others with the same type of injuries as his father, supporting expanding research efforts in preventing and treating CTE.
