Former NFL All-Star Quarterback Brett Favre Has Parkinson's: NPR

Brett Favre, the Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Green Bay Packers to victory in the 1997 Super Bowl, revealed during testimony before Congress on Tuesday that he suffers from Parkinson's disease.

Favre, 54, announced his diagnosis Tuesday during an appearance before the U.S. House Budget Committee on accountability and welfare reform.

Since 2020, Favre has been embroiled in a controversy over the misuse of public welfare funds in his home state of Mississippi, where audits revealed that public funds intended for needy families were used to pay Favre and fund projects he favored, including the construction of a volleyball facility at the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter played.

Another of these projects was an investment in a pharmaceutical company called Prevacus, which claimed to be developing a drug to treat concussions.

“I thought it would help others,” he said during the hearing on Tuesday. “It was too late for me because I was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.”

Favre has said he did not know the funds were intended for charitable purposes. He was never criminally charged in connection with the controversy and has filed a defamation suit against Mississippi state officials in the case.

Parkinson's is a disease of the nervous system that can cause tremors, movement and balance problems, and speech problems. There is no cure and symptoms usually worsen over time.

Parkinson's disease and other brain diseases such as dementia are linked to a history of concussions. The same is true of the degenerative brain disease CTE – chronic traumatic encephalopathy – which has been posthumously diagnosed in hundreds of NFL players whose brains were donated to researchers for study.

In a 2018 interview on the Today Show, Favre said he was diagnosed with “three or four” concussions during his NFL career, which lasted from 1991 to 2010.

Brett Favre #4 of the Green Bay Packers is tackled by a Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman during the NFC Wild Card game at Lambeau Field on January 9, 2005 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Favre said Tuesday he suffers from Parkinson's disease, which he experienced after a 20-year All-Star career in the NFL in which he suffered numerous concussions.

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He added, however, that with advances in concussion research in the years since his retirement, he realized he had probably suffered far more concussions.

“If you have ringing in your ears and you see stars, that's a concussion. And if that's a concussion, I've had hundreds, probably thousands, over the course of my career, and that's scary,” he said at the time.