By Peter Ryan
The AFL has recognised the link between head trauma and the degenerative brain disease CTE in its official submission to a Senate inquiry, but says the association between head trauma and long-term psychological health is less clear.
In its submission to the Senate inquiry into concussion and repeated head trauma in contact sports, the league said it “acknowledges that there is an association between head trauma and neurodegenerative disease [including chronic traumatic encephalopathy – neuropathological change – CTE-NC].”
Richmond’s Dion Prestia was subjected to the AFL’s concussion protocols after being felled by Geelong’s Tom Stewart last season (Stewart was suspended for four games).Credit: Getty Images
However, it argues that further research is needed into CTE through “well-designed prospective epidemiological studies that take into account the potential confounding variables”.
The AFL said its determination that there was a link between degenerative brain health and CTE was based on “a recent statement on CTE-NC by the National Institutes of Health [being part of the US Department of Health and Human Services and the nation’s medical research agency”.
The Senate inquiry is scheduled to hold a public hearing in Melbourne on April 26, when it is expected the AFL will face questions about its submission.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can only be determined via an autopsy and was found to exist in the brains of VFL/AFL players Graham “Polly” Farmer, Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck.
The AFL is facing several concussion lawsuits and two class actions relating to concussion. The league is considering how a no-fault compensation scheme might be rolled out after receiving recommendations on its feasibility from a report undertaken by respected laywer and former football administrator Peter Gordon.
In the submission to the Senate the AFL reserved its position on what liability it and clubs had to people who suffered head trauma while playing the sport but wrote: “Those duties are, amongst other things, informed by the relevant state of knowledge at the relevant time as to concussion and head trauma and their potential short, medium and long-term effects.”
The league has changed 30 rules related to head-high contact and is investing $2.5 million a year over the next decade into a longitudinal research study on concussion. It is also partnering with the Victorian Department of Health to explore how honest AFL and AFLW players are in disclosing concussion symptoms post-injury and how they might differ between sex and gender.
It had to apologise for the way it conducted a research project involving past players after investigating the work of former concussion adviser associate professor Paul McCrory, who was found to have plagiarised others’ work in some of his research papers into concussion. The AFL has restructured the past player program as a result of its report into McCrory, intending to recruit a clinical nurse to assist the chief medical officer with the revised program to be in place by June.
There have been suggestions that the wellbeing of some individuals may be affected by issues other than CTE, although brain specialist Alan Pearce, of the Sports Brain Bank, told The Age that “from a pathology perspective researchers can detect a difference between alcohol and drug abuse effects on the brain and CTE” when they do an autopsy.
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