Former Vikings linebacker Fred McNeill has been identified as the first living former NFL player diagnosed with CTE.
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Evanston's NorthShore University HealthSystem neurosurgeon Dr. Julian Bailes confirmed in the scientific journal Neurosurgery that researchers have the ability to identify chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in living patients.
Four years ago, researchers discovered scans indicated the presence of tau, a protein that builds up over damaged neurological cells, in the brains of living former NFL players.
A post-mortem examination confirmed one of the former living players examined was suffering from CTE.
CNN has identified former Viking linebacker Fred McNeill as the former player who living with CTE. McNiell's name originally was not mentioned in the Neurosurgery article, but it did state he was a defensive end in college and a linebacker in the NFL.
McNeill had his brain scanned when he was 59 after showing signs of behavioral and mood changes. He died in 2015 at age 63.
CTE is a degenerative neurological disease commonly found in people who have suffered repeated blows to the head, including football players and boxers. The links between football and CTE have been extensively debated and studied in recent years but a diagnosis was believed to only occur post-mortem.
“Our impression has been (CTE) is a very unique pattern” in the scans, said Bailes, who has been conducting research with scientists at UCLA to do scans of the brains of former football players and military personnel. “This is the first to have that brain specimen correlation.
“… It was very nice to get that scientific confirmation of that scientific truth,” Bailes told USA Today Sports on Wednesday.
McNeill was a 1974 first-round draft pick and spent 12 years with the Vikings and went to two Super Bowls.
He practiced law after retiring from the NFL, but started noticing memory lapses. According to the Star Tribune, these lapses led to the loss of his job at a law firm in 1996.