In a surprise admission, NFL Vice President of Health and Safety Jeff Miller acknowledged the link between football and brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease believed to be caused by repetitive brain injury. Proteins gather around the injured part of the brain.

When brain cells are healthy, the healthy cells eat the proteins, but in CTE, the proteins eventually outnumber the healthy brain cells. The healthy brain cells are too few to eradicate the proteins.

As recently as Super Bowl week, the NFL lauded Dr. Mitch Berger’s assertion that no such affiliation existed between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The San Francisco neurosurgeon leads the NFL subcommittee on long-term brain injury.

Miller’s admitted the link in March during a roundtable discussion on concussions organized by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce. He responded to Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., if a link had been established between football and neurodegenerative diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Miller replied, “The answer to that question is certainly yes.”

He went on to say, “I think the broader point, and the one that your question gets to, is what that necessarily means, and where do we go from here with that information.”

Miller added that the prevalence of the disease is unknown, as is the risk of suffering from it.

He cited the studies done by Dr. Ann McKee as the reason for his belief. McKee is the Boston University neuropathologist who found chronic traumatic encephalopathy in 90 of 94 former NFL players.

Surprisingly, the NFL released a statement the next day that said they agree with Miller.

NFL Concussion Settlement

U.S. District Judge Anita Brody approved an NFL concussion settlement in April 2015. NFL players who have serious cognitive impairments after receiving head injuries during their years playing for the NFL could receive up to $5 million.

Players who have taken issue with the settlement not covering future cases of CTE believe Miller’s validation of a football connection to the brain disease should add weight to their position.

For decades, physicians thought that brain disease could only occur after a player had suffered violent collisions and multiple concussions. This new evidence proves that not to be the case.

Offensive and defensive lineman made up 40 percent of the NFL cases McKee found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy. These players took hits during most every game, but had few, if any, concussions.

“The NFL is peddling a false sense of security,” Schakowsky said. “Football is a high-risk sport because of the routine hits, not just diagnosable concussions. What the American public need now is honesty about the health risks and clearly more research.”

Dr. Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, expressed that the medical community is “desperate to find a way to diagnose it in (living) people” because currently, chronic traumatic encephalopathy can only be diagnosed post-mortem.

“I unequivocally think there’s a link between playing football and CTE,” McKee said. “We’ve seen it in 90 out of 94 NFL players whose brains we’ve examined, we’ve found it in 45 out of 55 college players and six out of 26 high school players. No, I don’t think this represents how common this disease is in the living population, but the fact that over five years I’ve been able to accumulate this number of cases in football players, it cannot be rare. In fact, I think we are going to be surprised at how common it is.”