Kristen King // Staff Writer
While punches and kicks are an integral part of mixed martial arts, they also come with a dangerous after-effect that could drastically change the lives of fighters.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a degenerative disease found in those who have repeatedly suffered from brain trauma. All athletes have the possibility of suffering from CTE but the chances of it occurring within mixed martial arts is heightened due to the amount of damage they take in a fight.
The first case of CTE was recently diagnosed in MMA fighter Jordan Parsons, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident earlier this year in Delray Beach. According to Bennet Omalu, the pathologist responsible for discovering the disease in football players, there is no connection between the accident and Parson’s diagnosis.
This is a disease that develops over time so it is highly unlikely that a traumatic experience such as a car accident would cause CTE. As of right now, Omalu can only diagnose the disease in posthumous brain autopsies so it is possible for a fighter to be unaware of his or her condition.
While there is entertainment in mixed martial arts, there is also danger. Omalu said the sports world needs to come together and figure out a solution to this problem, as it can have devastating effects on these men and women.
In the beginning of 2016, the University launched a new neuroscience project which gave them the opportunity to do more brain research stemming from various areas, including traumatic brain injury.
Professors at the Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work college hope to find new information regarding brain injury using advanced imaging techniques. This will give them the ability to look and observe the brain more easily than ever before.
Anthony Dick, who serves as FIU’s Cognitive Neuroscience Program director, associate professor of psychology and director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, said that this relatively new discovery in brain injury has a long way to go in terms of research.
“There is plenty of evidence that shows contact sports and the development of CTE are related. You would want to avoid getting repeated hits to the head because the brain begins to move within the skill,” said Dick.
As aforementioned, CTE can only be discovered postmortem. Dick provided an explanation as to why this is and how that can be changed.
“CTE is defined looking at the cellular level and unfortunately you cannot get that resolution of information from a living person. One method that is being tried is the diffusion weighted imaging method which looks at changes in white matter structure in the brain,” said Dick.
With the mixture of imaging and sensitive behavioral methods, Dick said, he is hoping that researchers will pick up on the diagnosis of CTE earlier than postmortem.
As of today, the research surrounding CTE is still being done by the leaders of the Brain Injury Research Institute.
For Julian Bailes, lead doctor at the BIRI, the highest priority in sports is to avoid unnecessary hits to the head. In a sport like MMA, that may seem impossible, but it’s not.
With the combination of movement and blocks, fighters can lessen the damage they generally take in a fight. Although this may only slightly change the possibility of developing CTE, it’s a step in the right direction.
Update: Per sources at ESPN, fighters participating at the next Pay-Per-View event, UFC 205, will have insurance coverage against brain injury. The total amount of insurance will be one million dollars with each fighter receiving at least $1,600 worth of coverage.
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