A new study out of BU’s CTE Center found an increased risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in male hockey players the longer they played the game.

The neurodegenerative disease has been linked to contact sports like football, a game in which players often sustain repeated hits to the head. The latest study from BU’s CTE Center found that the odds of a hockey player getting CTE increased by 34 percent for each year played.

“We see a similar increase in risk for football with each additional year of play,” said Jesse Mez, the co-director of clinical research at the CTE Center. “I think that we expected to have a smaller increase than what we see in football. And the fact that that relative increase is similar was surprising.”

The study’s findings appear online this week in JAMA Network Open.

According to Mez, hockey players with longer careers were also more likely to have a more severe case of the disease.

For the study, researchers evaluated 77 deceased male hockey players and found that 96 percent of the professional players studied had CTE pathology. Additionally, 46 percent of college, juniors and semi-professional players and 10 percent of youth and high school players had CTE. Of the 19 NHL players studied, 18 had the disease, the study found.

Mez also stressed that the study isn’t about prevalence, noting that those who donated to the brain bank are more likely to have a lot of play and more likely to have symptoms.

“So there’s probably more CTE in our brain bank than what we would expect for individuals of similar level of play,” he said. “That being said, we still see these really high levels and it’s quite concerning.”

For several reasons, the connections between hockey and CTE have not been studied as thoroughly as football. Mez points to the fewer number of hockey players compared to football players in the U.S. and football’s well documented history with the issue.

But now that research has started to show a connection between prolonged hockey play and CTE, Mez is hoping it will spur change.

“I think hockey is different from football in that the checking is less inherent to the game” he said. “I think you could reduce checking and still have a meaningful, important sport where there’s competition...and I think that would reduce risk.”

Mez said the research can also help inform players and parents about their decisions to play and might give more insight to former players who suffer from CTE symptoms.