CTE diagnosed in professional female athlete for first time

FREMANTLE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA - FEBRUARY 26: Heather Anderson of the Crows looks to pass the ball during the round four AFL Women's match between the Fremantle Dockers and the Adelaide Crows at Fremantle Oval on February 26, 2017 in Fremantle, Australia. This story contains depictions of suicide.

Scientists at the Australian Sports Brain Bank announced Monday that Heather Anderson, a former Australian rules football player,a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated traumatic brain injuries. Anderson's family donated her brain to ASBB after she took her own life in 2022 at the age of 28. She played contact sports pretty much her entire life, and after years in youth leagues she was drafted into the women's Australian Football League in 2016. Numerous injuries — including one confirmed concussion that caused her to wear a helmet — led to her retirement after just one season. She later became an army medic.

Athletes in high-contact sports like American and Australian football, hockey, rugby, boxing, and MMA are particularly at risk of developing CTE. But due to the small number of high-contact professional sports for women, and the worldwide publicity of the NFL's CTE scandal, the focus of CTE has largely been on men. But according to ASBB director Michael Buckland, CTE doesn't look any different in a woman's brain than it does in a man's.

"There were multiple CTE lesions as well as abnormalities nearly everywhere I looked in her cortex. It was indistinguishable from the dozens of male cases I've seen,"

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