Reveals dementia risk in former professional footballers

Study reveals dementia risk in former professional footballers. A landmark study led by the University of Glasgow has revealed the first major insights into lifelong health outcomes in former professional footballers. In findings published today in The New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the Football Association (FA) and the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), researchers compared the causes of death of 7,676 former Scottish male professional football players who were born between 1900 and 1976 against those of more than 23,000 matched individuals from the general population. Former pro footballers had an approx 3.5 times higher rate of death due to neurodegenerative disease, but were less likely to die of diseases such as heart disease and some cancers, says new @UofGMVLS study led by @WillSTEWNeuro in @NEJM - https://t.co/3RlEtHoZx6 pic.twitter.com/imTDKhNyNo - University of Glasgow (@UofGlasgow) October 21, 2019 Led by consultant neuropathologist Dr Willie Stewart, honorary clinical associate Professor at the University of Glasgow, the FIELD study found that former professional footballers had an approximately three and a half times higher rate of death due to neurodegenerative disease than expected. Dr Stewart, said: "This is the largest study to date looking in this detail at the incidence of neurodegenerative disease in any sport, not just professional footballers. "A strength of our study design is that we could look in detail at rates of different neurodegenerative disease subtypes.