Researchers tracking the potential connection between football-related head injuries and mental-health disorders are now turning their attention to soccer.
The expanded scope comes with the news that medical investigators have determined that Bellini, a Brazilian soccer star who led the team that won the 1958 World Cup, had a degenerative brain disease linked to American football players and boxers when he died in March at age 83.
His death was initially attributed to to Alzheimer’s disease, but researchers now say he had an advanced case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy — CTE — which is caused by repeated blows to the head and causes symptoms similar to dementia, The New York Times reports.
CTE can be diagnosed only after death.
Bellini is the second known case among soccer players, according to Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist at Boston University and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, Mass., who assisted in examining Bellini’s brain. McKee was also involved this year when researchers diagnose CTE in a 29-year-old semiprofessional American soccer player. McKee said she was aware of a third former soccer player who had CTE but that she was not yet authorized to publicly identify the person.
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