Table 5.

Summary of clinical and pathological findings of footballers reported in the literature and present series

Case report	No. of cases	Age at death	Years playing football	Football playing position; level	History of concussion	Alcohol or substance abuse	Age at symptom onset	Disease duration	Presenting symptoms	Behavioural and mood changes	Other clinical features	Final clinical diagnosis	Septal abnormalities	Neuropathological diagnoses
McKee et al. [31]	1	29	26	NK but headed the ball frequently since age 5; semi-professional	NK	–	27	2	Limb weakness	–	–	ALS	NK	CTE MND TDP-43
Hales et al. [14]	1	80	16	Forward/striker; professional	NK	NK	70	10	Executive dysfunction and memory loss	Irritable, obsessive	Parkinsonism	AD	NK	CTE AD (mild) TDP-43 HS
Grinberg et al. [13]	1	83	21	Centre-back; professional	–	–	67	16	Memory loss	Shouting spells	Slow and abnormal gait	AD	C	CTE AD (Intermediate) TDP-43 HS SVD (Mild)
Bieniek et al. [4]	1	73	NK	NK; amateur	NK	Alcohol	66	7	Memory loss	NK	NK	AD	NK	AD
Ling et al. (present series)	6 (PM cases)	72 (mean)	25.7 (mean)	Centre-back or centre-forward (N = 3) but all headed the ball frequently; 5 professional, 1 committed amateur	In 5 footballers (only 1 episode in each)	–	64.3 (mean)	7.7 (mean)	Memory loss and/or behavioural changes	Yes (all)	Parkinsonism (3)	AD/FTD ± PD	F (6) C (1)	CTE (N = 4) AD (N = 6) TDP-43 (N = 6) CAA (N = 5) HS (N = 2) SVD (N = 1) CBD (N = 1) LBD (N = 1)

– absent, AD Alzheimer’s disease, ALS amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, CAA cerebral amyloid angiopathy, CBD corticobasal degeneration, CTE chronic traumatic encephalopathy, F fenestration, HS hippocampal sclerosis, LBD Lewy body disease, PM post-mortem, SVD small vessel disease, TDP-43 transactive response DNA-binding protein 43 kDa, NK not known or not reported