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The National Football League has acknowledged that football is directly connected to a disease that has hit many players; chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. During a roundtable discussion on concussions, the US House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce. Jeff Miller assured that there is a direct link between football and neurodegenerative diseases such as CTE.

The assertion was made based on the study conducted by Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neuropathologist who has diagnosed CTE in the brains of 176 people, including those of 90 of 94 former NFL players. McKee warned during a Congressional panel that "It cannot be rare. In fact, I think we are going to be surprised at how common it is" in football players.

Over the past 3 and half years, the NFL has donated more than $100 million for scores of research studies.

The report issued on the matter said that a research published over last year showed that repetitive trauma can be the reason for permanent brain damage; and consent was made among a dozen neuroscientists that CTE has "only been found in individuals who were exposed to brain trauma, typically multiple episodes."

The research reinforced the connection between repetitive head trauma and CTE, but also suggested that the disease may be prevalent among people in the general population who played contact sports, yet many questions seem to remain unanswered.

The condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was formerly believed to exist primarily among boxers, and was referred to as dementia pugilistica. It afflicts the brain of people who have suffered repeated concussions and traumatic brain injuries, such as athletes who take part in contact sports, members of the military and others.

The brain of an individual who suffers from chronic traumatic encephalopathy gradually deteriorates and will over time end up losing mass.

Brain Injury Research Institute doctors Bennet I. Omalu, M.D. and Julian Bailes, M.D. were the first to diagnose CTE in a professional football player in 2002. The condition has so far only been diagnosable through the post-mortem examination of the brain of an individual suspected of suffering from CTE.

In a recent interview, Dr. Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke said "That's what keeps me up at night,", adding "At least at this early stage, it seems to be much more common than anybody imagined. That's kind of what we've been afraid of for a while, and now we have data that it is more widespread. ... I think we have a significant problem that's getting bigger as we see how this pathology is more common."

In this context, NFL officials have been denying any links between the game and the disease. But Dr. Julian Bailes, a former Pittsburgh Steelers doctor and co-director of the NorthShore Neurological Institute in Evanston, Illinois, said he thinks it's dangerous for the NFL, given its influence, to continue to cast doubts on established CTE research.

Following months of NFL officials’ denial that the link had been established and downplaying the risks of playing football, Miller was the first to publically admit the link.

CTE was first reported in a former NFL player, Steelers Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, in 2005. Many researchers, in fact, have long moved on from the question of whether CTE is caused by repetitive head trauma. They instead are trying to determine the process that occurs inside the brain after those hits occur.