Professionals voice concerns about the negative effects of media coverage on recent NFL and CTE research
This article was initially published in the 10/1/26 edition of our Concussion Update newsletter; please consider subscribing.
In follow-up articles, several medical professionals expressed concern about detrimental impacts on the public, particularly those with concussions, of the way the media covered the research findings that 1 in 4 NFL players were diagnosed with CTE after death. The concern is that the media coverage may stoke fear about having CTE, causing people not to pursue available treatment for their current symptoms, such as persisting concussion symptoms, sleep apnea, and anxiety.
Uzma Samadani, MD, PhD, in a Forbes article, stated, “The second reason for caution in interpretation of these results is that many athletes or other people who have a single or few concussions may look at the media storm around this result and misunderstand the incidental association between brain injury and chronic neurodegenerative pathology.” In a LinkedIn post, she added, “I wish The New York Times would… explain that most people who sustain a brain injury may get better with appropriate therapy. I worry that the general public will see articles such as the one in The New York Times, and extrapolate to their own circumstances. The anxiety and angst created by believing one has an irreversible neurodegenerative condition after a brain injury does not help with healing.”
In a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health press release, Rachel Grashow, senior research scientist, said, “Our concern is that the public and kitchen table conversations around CTE are creating hopelessness in living former NFL players,” she told NPR. “And this hopelessness may discourage them from reaching out to their doctors and getting treated for conditions, like sleep apnea, that are causing worrisome symptoms.” She said it’s important to encourage former players to tell doctors and loved ones about any concerning symptoms.”
Shan Patel, PsyD, in a Patel Concussion Institute blog post, wrote, “In studies of people without that extreme career-long exposure history, CTE turns up rarely or not at all.” He added, “If you're weeks out [from a concussion] and still symptomatic, that is usually not evidence of permanent damage. It's usually evidence that nobody has figured out what is driving your symptoms, and how to treat it…The most protective thing you can do for your brain right now is not to worry harder about a disease that can't be diagnosed in you [CTE can only be diagnosed with an autopsy]. It's to get the injury you actually have properly evaluated and properly treated, because that is the exposure that matters, and it's the one still in front of you.”
