Researchers at several universities and research institutes were awarded almost $16 million Tuesday to find a way to diagnose, while victims are alive, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head hits in contact sports.
The National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke issued the seven-year grant as part of a long-term study of brain disease in former NFL and college football players, many of whom suffered multiple concussions on the field.
Despite the implications that the research may have on football players and the NFL, no league money will be used to help pay for the grant.
For years, researchers have been able to diagnose CTE only by examining the brains of players who died and whose families agreed to donate the organ, a limitation that has slowed efforts to determine who is susceptible to having the disease.
The new study, considered among the most ambitious in the field of sports-related brain injury, aims to develop ways to spot the disease in the living and figure out why certain players get it and others do not. A more comprehensive understanding of the disease, the researchers said, may lead to ways to prevent it.
"There are so many critical unanswered questions about CTE," Dr. Robert Stern, the lead principal investigator and a professor at Boston University School of Medicine, said in a statement. "We are optimistic that this project will lead to many of these answers, by developing accurate methods of detecting and diagnosing CTE during life, and by examining genetic and other risk factors for this disease."
The grant did not come from a pool of money created in 2012 when the NFL pledged $30 million to the NIH to pay for research on CTE and other issues related to head trauma, and said it would not have any veto power over how the money was used.
The NIH had asked to use some of it, but after encountering delays with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, which is administering the money, it decided to finance the grant with other funds, said a person familiar with the process but who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the researchers' statement is the official comment.
The foundation said the NFL was willing to contribute to the new study but it was the NIH's decision to finance it on its own.
"NIH made the decision to fund this study in its entirety,'' said a statement from the foundation, which added that the NFL has no control over the use of the funds or veto power over any grant decisions.
In its own statement, the NIH did not explain why the NFL was not contributing money but credited the league with supporting eight other studies related to brain injuries.
"We expect that the NFL will fund future studies to help improve player safety and health, on and off the field,'' the statement said.
ESPN reported Tuesday that the NFL did not want its money used for the research because researchers from Boston University, who have been critical of the league and the way it has handled concussions in players, were involved. The report said the NFL managed to influence the foundation administering the funds.
In response to ESPN, a spokesman for the league, Brian McCarthy, said that it did not "pull funding" from the study, that "the NIH makes all funding decisions" and that the NFL has no "veto power" over its $30 million grant to the NIH.
He declined to say why the NFL was not contributing money to the grant announced Tuesday.
Stern declined to comment on the funding issue.
The inability of doctors to diagnose CTE in living patients has been in the forefront of a debate over a settlement between the NFL and all retired players.
The deal, which is being appealed, pays up to $4 million to former players found with CTE who died from 2006 to April 2015, when the settlement was approved by a district court judge. During an appeals hearing in November, objectors to the settlement said that the cutoff date was arbitrary and that it should cover the possibility that doctors find a way to detect the disease in living patients.
The new study involves about 50 researchers from 17 research institutions including the University of Arizona, Banner Alzheimer's Institute, Boston University, the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic.