Report: More former NFL players want in on CTE study

Mark Duper played 11 seasons with the Dolphins and says he has symptoms of CTE. (Stephen Dunn/Getty Images) Nine former National Football League players

Mark Duper played 11 seasons with the Dolphins and says he has symptoms of CTE. (Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

Nine former National Football League players recently received tests at UCLA for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative condition that has been linked to dementia and depression.

All nine were diagnosed with CTE and the researchers at UCLA say that over 100 former players have inquired about getting tests to see if they have the condition. UCLA is working with TauMark, a company that purchased a license to the brain scan used to test for signs of CTE.

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According to William Weinbaum of ESPN.com, about a dozen former athletes, of whom all but three played in the NFL, are being considered for the next group to be tested.

"We're not advertising and not commercially open for business," said Bob Fitzsimmons, a TauMark director who was the attorney for Mike Webster, the Hall of Fame center whose autopsy 11 years ago produced the first diagnosis of CTE. "We're still in the study phase." "We're creating a database, and we should be commercially able to do it [conduct more tests] beginning in the first quarter of 2014, said Bill West, an attorney in Louisiana and TauMark director.