Heather Anderson Diagnosed with CTE; 1st Known Case in Professional Female Athlete

Former Australian rules football player Heather Anderson was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) following her death in November, according to ESPN.com.

Anderson is the first professional female athlete to receive the diagnosis. The 28-year-old died by suicide last fall.

Former NFL center Mike Webster was the first American football player to be diagnosed with CTE after his death in 2002. That discovery helped lead to a wider examination into the long-term health effects of playing football.

The potential cognitive risks posed by combat sports such as boxing had been well-known to that point. Research into CTE shed light into damage that repeated head trauma can cause for other athletes.

Australian Sports Brain Bank professor Michael Buckland told Elias Clure of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Anderson's diagnosis could serve as another tipping point.

"While we've been finding CTE in males for quite some time, I think this is really the tip of the iceberg and it's a real red flag that now women are participating [in contact sport] just as men are, that we are going to start seeing more and more CTE cases in women," he said.

Neurologist Alan Pearce echoed those comments to Clure.

"Despite the fact that we know that women have greater rates of concussion, we haven't actually got any long-term evidence until now," he said. "So this is a highly significant case study."

Clure noted Anderson had at least one documented concussion in her career. In addition to playing rugby at the youth level, she made eight appearances for the Adelaide Crows during the AFL Women's inaugural season in 2017, according to Clure.