Adelaide premiership player Heather Anderson has become the first known professional female athlete to be diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) after a landmark diagnosis at the Australian Sports Brain Bank.

Ms Anderson, who played eight games for the Adelaide Crows in 2017, had an injury-plagued career that included at least one confirmed diagnosed concussion.

The talented defender retired at the end of the 2017 season and returned to work as an army medic in Perth.

She took her own life in November 2022 at age 28.

Director of the Australian Sports Brain Bank Professor Michael Buckland says the diagnosis is a significant step in understanding the effects years of playing contact sport has on women’s brains.

“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,” he said.

Professor Buckland has co-authored a report on his findings with neurophysiologist Alan Pearce, which has been published in the Springer Medical Journal.

Professor Buckland said he found “low-stage CTE” in Ms Anderson’s brain, consistent with her young age, and found “she had three definite lesions in her brain.”

“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,” he said.

Researchers say severe cases of CTE can present similarly to Alzheimer’s or depression, however, Ms Anderson is said to have shown no signs of a significant deterioration in health before her death in 2022.

Neurologist Alan Pearce says research on CTE has been limited due to the lack of support from major sporting codes but hopes the diagnosis is a wake-up call to the AFLW.

“Despite the fact that we know that women have greater rates of concussion, we haven’t actually got any long-term evidence until now. So this is a highly significant case study.”

Family’s response

Heather Anderson’s father Brian Anderson says he is still processing the diagnosis.

“It was a surprise, but not a surprise. And 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 says his daughter was a shy but determined person that worked hard to reach the pinnacle of her sport.

“Heather was a very quiet, reserved person. She didn’t make friends easily. She didn’t know how to necessarily be involved in social situations. But she was very determined. And she found good friendship groups, through sport,” he said.

Mr Anderson and his wife watched on as their daughter took to contact sports at a young age where she often played against boys who were older than her.

Cognisant of the potential concussion risks, her mother insisted her daughter wear a helmet in games.

Ms Anderson later became known for wearing a bright pink helmet during her matches. Mr Anderson said the pink headgear became her trademark through her later career in Canberra, and then into the AFLW.

Mr Anderson told 7.30 he has no gripes with the AFL but does hope more brains can be donated to the Australian Sports Brain Bank so more research can be done into the effects contact sport can have on female athletes.

The AFL and AFLW have previously acknowledged the ongoing health risks of concussion and introduced several policies which it says have made the game and its players safer.

Mr Anderson said: “I haven’t really put my mind to a legacy. And maybe it’s too early and maybe I don’t really know what I want the legacy to be. And at this stage, I don’t have a dream for legacy.”

He says he would hate for women to stop playing contact sports “because of the fear” of getting CTE.

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Source: AFL NEWS ABC