|
 Research from Professor Willie Stewart, who leads the FIELD
(Football's Influence on Lifelong Health and Dementia Risk) study,
previously found that former footballers are 3.5 times more likely
to die with dementia than the general public.
New research has shown that outfield players were four times more
likely to be diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease with the risk
being highest among defenders, who are five times more likely to
have dementia than non-footballers.
The study, which compared health records of 7,676 Scottish male
players, found that the risk increased with the length of their
careers, but the findings remained the same for players regardless
of the era in which they competed.
"With the current data, we're now at the point to suggest that
football should be sold with a health warning saying repeated
heading in football may lead to an increased risk of dementia,"
Stewart said.
"The data from this paper is the missing link in trying to
understand this connection between sport and dementia... There is no
other proposed risk factor and this is one we could really address
and eliminate this disease.
"I think football has to ask the difficult questions: is heading
absolutely necessary to the game of football? Is potential exposure
to degenerative brain disease absolutely necessary? Or can some
other form of the game be considered?"
[to top of second column] |
 Last week, the Football
Association (FA), Premier League and other
governing bodies announced guidelines limiting
"high-impact" headers to 10 per week in training
from the 2021-22 season. [L4N2P424K]
Stewart criticised the rules, which were
implemented as a precautionary measure, arguing
they were based on "unscientific guesswork".
"There is no basis on which to say 10 headers of
a certain level will somehow produce no risk or
even make a great difference to risk. It is a
best guesstimate and we would have to wait 30 or
40 years to see the impact," he said.
The research, funded by the FA and the
Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), was
conducted by the University of Glasgow and
published
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/
jamaneurology/fullarticle/2782750 in the journal
JAMA Neurology on Monday.
(Reporting by Hritika Sharma in Bengaluru;
Editing by Christian Radnedge)
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