A quarter of NFL players who died had CTE. Or almost all of them did.
The range is the finding, not a failure of the study. 1,712 former players died between 2008 and 2021; 338 brains were examined, and who donates a brain is not random.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
4 articles published between November 3, 2025 and August 26, 2026.
CTE in 2026: what the new evidence established, and what it still cannot
A 614-donor autopsy study tied advanced CTE to dementia independently of other brain disease. A separate imaging report in three former athletes hints at a test for the living. The caveats on both are heavy.
A military brain bank found no definitive CTE among 163 donors
A decade-on review of chronic traumatic encephalopathy research reports that 5 of 70 veteran donors had features of the pathology and none met the full definition. A small UK rugby study looks elsewhere.
Neurons in CTE carry mutation patterns seen in Alzheimer's. Head impacts alone did not
Sequencing hundreds of single neurons from 15 donors with CTE and 4 with repetitive head impacts but no CTE, researchers found the genomic damage tracked the disease, not the exposure.