AFLW player Heather Anderson tragically died in 2022. Her autopsy found something groundbreaking.

This post mentions suicide and could be triggering for some readers. 

AFLW player Heather Anderson has become the world's first known female athlete to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head injuries.

With the consent of her family, the diagnosis was made after the 28-year-old's brain was donated to the Australian Sports Brain Bank to better understand why she died.

The finding in a female athlete will have major repercussions for the future of women in sports.

Anderson played for the Adelaide Crows during the 2017 AFLW season and in the grand final win against the Brisbane Lions. 

She was known for wearing bright pink headgear during games for protection.

"[Mum] hated watching me get smashed," Anderson told Mamamia in 2017.

The premiership player retired in 2017 after suffering a shoulder injury and returned to work as an army medic in Perth.

She took her own life in November 2022, aged 28.

The Adelaide Football Club is deeply saddened by the unexpected passing of Premiership player Heather Anderson. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends. pic.twitter.com/4aUz8GZ8p7

— Adelaide Crows AFLW (@CrowsAFLW) November 14, 2022

CTE is a neurodegenerative disease that causes the death of nerve cells in the brain.

It's increasingly associated with athletes who play contact sports, such as football, AFL, martial arts and boxing, and gets worse over time.

It's incurable and can only be diagnosed post-mortem.

In people who have been confirmed to have had the disease, symptoms have included memory loss, impulsive behaviour, aggression and depression.

The finding that Anderson had CTE raises questions about how a lifetime of playing contact sports might have played a role in her death. 

It also highlights the lack of research done on female athletes.

In recent years, a number of high-profile Australian sportsmen were found to have been suffering from CTE when they died, including AFL players Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck, and NRL player and coach Paul Green.

In the US, a 2017 study examined the brains of 111 NFL players. 110 were found to have CTE.

NRL player Terry Long died at 45 with a brain described as that of a "90-year-old with advanced Alzheimer’s".

Vincent Jackson, a four-time NFL Man of the Year award recipient, died alone aged 38.

Aaron Hernandez, who played alongside Tom Brady, died by suicide while in prison for murder (violence is a symptom of CTE) and had "one of the most severe cases of CTE found in a person his age".

I highly recommend this show. Regardless of what Aaron Hernandez did, CTE is real. Sports safety needs to be a bigger topic of conversation pic.twitter.com/aMqdApdNde

— Amanda A (@goodvibes94) January 18, 2020

Although there is no cure for CTE, the Australian Sports Brain Bank continues to use donated tissue to try and understand more about the disease, including why some individuals get it and others don't.

"We can study donor tissue to help understand the biological processes involved in the development of CTE and this will lead to the development of tests that can diagnose CTE in life, and also help in developing effective treatments."

On December 1, 2022, the Senate announced a Parliamentary inquiry into concussions and repeated head trauma in contact sports. The report is due August 2, 2023.

The world-first finding of CTE in a female athlete shows that the disease – like so many others – does not discriminate and highlights the importance of including women in brain injury studies.

Otherwise, we know for certain that although Anderson is the first confirmed female athlete to have the disease, she won't be the last.

Feature image: Twitter/Adelaide Crows AFLW

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