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49ers legend Dwight Clark passes away.


TecmoSuperJoe

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One of my first memories of football. Montana flushed with the pressure, made a backfoot throw and Clark made one of the most amazing catches I've seen. 

Sad to see ALS impact another person...

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1 hour ago, Kiwibrown said:

Rip.

if it turns out to be cte rather than als it will be a huge black mark against football 

It could be both. ALS and CTE share alot of the same symptoms.

This could turn out to be a case similar to Kevin Turner where the original cause of death was suspected to be ALS until later on when researchers discovered that it was NOT ALS that killed him, but was in fact, CTE. 

 They are finding out more and more about both; the relations and similarities between the two, that they are now getting to a point where they will be able to properly separate the two from one another in the event of a death. edit: They may not be quite there yet in terms of 100%, but in terms of certainty percentage, it's getting there.  

If he donated his brain to science, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if turns out to be determined that CTE was the main factor of cause in his death just like Kevin Turner.

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15 minutes ago, JustAnotherFan said:

It could be both. ALS and CTE share alot of the same symptoms.

This could turn out to be a case similar to Kevin Turner where the original cause of death was suspected to be ALS until later on when researchers discovered that it was NOT ALS that killed him, but was in fact, CTE. 

 They are finding out more and more about both; the relations and similarities between the two, that they are now getting to a point where they will be able to properly separate the two from one another in the event of a death. edit: They may not be quite there yet in terms of 100%, but in terms of certainty percentage, it's getting there.  

If he donated his brain to science, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if turns out to be determined that CTE was the main factor of cause in his death just like Kevin Turner.

It seems like there are ways to diagnose als without a post mortem, unlike cte. It will be interesting to find out the results. 

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13 minutes ago, Kiwibrown said:

It seems like there are ways to diagnose als without a post mortem, unlike cte. It will be interesting to find out the results. 

Oh no doubt. But the symptoms leading up to those diagnosis's are hard to determine until further evaluation and comparisons made to CTE - which are not readily available just yet until post-mortem. 

edit: What I'm saying is, they're not going to know unless he donated his brain and they do the proper comparisons and evaluations.

They're making strides in understanding CTE but unfortunately science hasn't caught up just yet.  

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6 hours ago, JustAnotherFan said:

Oh no doubt. But the symptoms leading up to those diagnosis's are hard to determine until further evaluation and comparisons made to CTE - which are not readily available just yet until post-mortem. 

edit: What I'm saying is, they're not going to know unless he donated his brain and they do the proper comparisons and evaluations.

They're making strides in understanding CTE but unfortunately science hasn't caught up just yet.  

Ultimately, it's the science which will give us the baseline levels of CTE which are a problem, and there will be technology which will allow us to scan living players to determine where they stand. We simply don't know why some younger former players struggle, yet older NFL alumni are doing well. These older players had worse equipment, sustained many hits, and must have some degree of CTE.

As fans who understand tackle football on balance, is a positive activity, we don't want to make false assumptions about the sport, or assume this problem can't be handled. There are plenty of writers outside this site, eager to post negative stories about football. One of the huge mistakes all levels of football made over the years was rarely talking about the many positive aspects of the game, and that's proving to be costly now. 

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1 hour ago, LaserFocus said:

... and there will be technology which will allow us to scan living players to determine where they stand.

You can find elevated Tau in living brains; a team at UCLA has identified a marker and a developed & validated a test using FDDNP. And there are others in current use via PET scans to support various clinical trials

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-imaging-technique-predicts-220856

CTE is an accepted neuropathological diagnosis and is used in many of the clinical trials currently underway, studying Alzheimers and TBI. In addition to the Tau biomarker, there are a few others  - as well as neurocognitive tests that are used as endpoints in these trials. 

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02266563

Elevated levels of Tau protein/tangles are found in several other indications as well, and that's part of the work being done to better understand how these serious medical issues are linked. There are currently more than 27 clinical trials engaged in elucidating the biology around this malady ( CTE) and thousands of patients have been studied in previously-conducted trials across the globe in CTE, AD and ALS.

The more likely cause of death is ALS because it causes degeneration of the nerves both inside the brain / spinal cord and throughout the body and it leads to loss of muscle control - including breathing.

So there are ways to learn more about Dwight's case without necessarily donating his brain, but that would be more useful and maybe the family chooses that option to help move the research forward. 

Dwight Clark was a hell of a football player and Grade A human being, he will be missed.

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