a first New Zealand player to die in 2023 diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy – Libération

Specialists have diagnosed Billy Guyton, who died at age 33, as the nation’s first player to suffer the degenerative brain disease associated in a number of contact sports with repeated blows to the head.

Former New Zealand Auckland Blues scrum-half Billy Guyton, who died last year, is the first professional rugby player in the country to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease degenerative brain disease.

Medical specialists made this post-mortem discovery thanks to the player’s family who donated his brain to the University of Auckland in order to establish a diagnosis on the reasons for his death. Maurice Curtis, co-director of the Brain Bank, declared on Friday March 16 that stage 2 of ETC had been noted by a pathologist based in New Zealand and assisted by a specialist in Australia in Billy Guyton, who died in May 2023 in 33 Years.

The discovery comes as a group of nearly 300 former rugby players, including Steve Thompson and Phil Vickery, World Cup winners with England in 2003, decided to take legal action over the injuries brain problems from which they suffer. These high-level athletes claim that World Rugby, as well as the English and Welsh unions, have failed to take reasonable measures to protect their health and safety.

Guyton’s father John told Radio New Zealand these symptoms applied to his son, who retired early in 2018 after suffering concussions. “The poor thing spent hours in a little dark closet because he couldn’t stand being in the light,” testified John Guyton. Some mornings he would sit at the bottom of his shower tray crying, trying to muster the energy to move.”

CTE has been associated in a number of contact sports with repeated blows to the head and is known to cause violent outbursts, dementia and depression, among other things. Injuries caused by blows to the head are also believed to cause other disorders such as motor neuron disease, dementia praecox, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.

In a statement, the New Zealand Federation assured that it had taken measures to reduce the danger of head impacts. “The NZR also supports cutting-edge research to better understand the long-term impacts of playing rugby, particularly to understand the link between concussions and long-term brain health,” the text specifies.

In France, a group of around twenty players who played in France, represented by the Alekto law firm, all victims of the consequences of repeated head shocks, filed a series of administrative appeals against the Federation in early 2023. French Rugby League and the National Rugby League “for failure to fulfill their security and information obligations”. French players joined the action, including former Chambéry hooker Quentin Garcia, 31 (who also took his club to court) and former Stade Rennes second-row Sarah Chlagou, 25. , that Libération had met. They then denounced the indifference of the federation and launched a call to radically change mentalities in the world of rugby.