Billy Guyton, a rugby player who died in May 2023 at the age of 33, was the first known professional rugby player in New Zealand to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease of the brain, medical specialists have discovered.
CTE has been associated with repeated hits to the head in a number of contact sports and is known to cause violent outbursts, dementia and depression.
The former Auckland Blues scrum-half was found to have CTE after his family donated his brain to the Neurological Foundation Human Brain Bank at the University of Auckland. Maurice Curtis, co-director of the structure, declared, Friday March 15, in a press release that stage 2 of ETC had been noted in Billy Guyton by a pathologist established in New Zealand and assisted by a specialist in Australia.
“Hours in a small closet”
Guyton’s father John told Radio New Zealand these symptoms applied to his son, who retired early in 2018 after suffering concussions.
“The poor man spent hours in a small, dark closet because he couldn’t stand being in the lightsaid John Guyton. Some mornings he would sit at the bottom of his shower tray crying, trying to muster the energy to move. »
The discovery comes as a group of nearly three hundred former rugby players, including Steve Thompson and Phil Vickery, World Cup winners with England in 2003, decided to take legal action over the brain damage from which they suffer. These players claim that World Rugby, as well as the English and Welsh unions, failed to take reasonable measures to protect their health and safety.
Injuries caused by blows to the head are thought to cause other disorders, such as motor neurone disease, dementia praecox, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.
In a statement, the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZR) assured that it had taken measures to reduce the danger of head impacts. “NZR also supports cutting-edge research to better understand the long-term impacts of playing rugby, including understanding the link between concussion and long-term brain health”specifies the text.