Late Adelaide AFLW premiership player Heather Anderson has become the first known professional woman athlete to be diagnosed with the brain disease linked to concussions and head knocks.
The Australian Sports Brain Bank studied Anderson after she took her life last November, aged 28, following an injury-hit football career which included at least one diagnosed concussion.
Now she has been diagnosed with degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), at a low stage as expected given her age, with “three definite lesions in her brain”.
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“While we’ve been finding CTE in males for quite some time, I think this is really the tip of the iceberg and it’s a real red flag that now women are participating (in contact sport) just as men are, that we are going to start seeing more and more CTE cases in women,” Professor Michael Buckland, director of the Australian Sports Brain Bank, told the ABC.
“In other parts of the brain, there was just the hint of the start of the process. So definitely low-stage which would fit with Heather’s age. That’s what we would expect to see.”
Anderson’s father Brian told the ABC it was “a surprise but not a surprise”.
“I didn’t really go out of my way to discuss it with people. And I think now that this report has been published, I’m sort of trying to think about how it might play out for female sportspeople everywhere,” he told 7.30.
“Suicide: It’s a tough one. It’s a tough way to see your child die, it’s tough to see your child die anyway. But suicide causes you to re-examine everything, to look at every interaction.”
Mr Anderson called for more brains to be donated to the Australian Sports Brain Bank for further research.
