Former NFL player diagnosed with CTE before death

Help me understand this.

Ex-NFL player confirmed as first case of living person identified with CTE
CTE has been seen in people as young as 17, but symptoms do not generally begin appearing until years after the onset of head impacts.

Was he the 17year old?????????????????????????

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/health/cte-confirmed-in-first-living-person-bn/index.html

What is CTE | Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

Early symptoms of CTE usually appear in a patient's late 20s or 30s, and affect a patient's mood and behavior. Some common changes seen include impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and paranoia.

 CTE has been seen in people as young as 17, but symptoms do not generally begin appearing until years after the onset of head impacts.

As the disease progresses, some patients may experience problems with thinking and memory, including memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, and eventually progressive dementia. Cognitive symptoms tend to appear later than mood and behavioral symptoms, and generally first appear in a patient’s 40s or 50s. Patients may exhibit one or both symptom clusters. In some cases, symptoms worsen with time (even if the patient suffers no additional head impacts). In other cases, symptoms may be stable for years before worsening.

They say he is 1st living person with it.
Yet the site I posted make it sound as many living people have had it.

What am I over looking?

First diagnosis of a living patient. The other diagnoses came after death. Others were living with it but were misdiagnosed because the symptoms are similar to other conditions. Now the doctor that discovered CTE is working to raise money for a clinical trial to see if the initial findings will be replicated.

Thank You
That helps.

lots of people live with it until they die.

The question is how many in the general population have it vs NFL players or other athletes prone to head trauma.  Right now they are primarily doing autopsies on the athlete population.  Even if 90% show it post mortem what if the general population shows it at a similar rate?  It's self selecting data-the symptomatic or those more exposed to the trauma are most likely to volunteer their brains.

I didn't read the piece, but I think it's nearly impossible to detect outside of an autopsy, isn't it? So being able to diagnose this in a living person would be a huge breakthrough. 

@"MaroonBells" said: I didn't read the piece, but I think it's nearly impossible to detect outside of an autopsy, isn't it? So being able to diagnose this in a living person would be a huge breakthrough. 

Or what if they start finding it in violent crime  suspects and it becomes a viable defense,  you have to know that's likely if they can diagnose it before death,  even if it's full effects can't be determined.

Does all of this mean the eventual demise of football as we know it? Would that bother anyone? Is my entertainment more valuable than someone’s health?

Those are all questions that will eventually have to be answered. I know a lot of people have the mindset that nobody is forced to play the game. But, those are usually people who don’t have anything to lose by others playing the game.

My youngest son sustained a concussion in middle school football. It was about 4 games into the season, he missed the remaining 5 games. The next season he blew his knee out. 

Those two injuries set him back tremdously in school. His grades suffered, he was depressed. It has taken his entire sophomore year and now almost half of his junior year to pull his grades back up to where he was in middle school. It’s been tough.

When he decided not to play football after his freshman year, we were good with that.

RIP Fred...