Footballers may be at added risk of dementia

LONDON: The most detailed British research ever undertaken into dementia among retired footballers has concluded that the condition may be connected to repeated head impacts, caused by collisions and thousands of headers.

The study included postmortem examinations on six players who suffered dementia, which reveal that all of them had suffered from a tearing to a brain membrane consistent with chronic, repetitive head impacts from playing football. The incidence of that tearing in the general population is just 6%, based on previous studies.

Post-mortems on the brains of retired players have been very rare, though they provide the best possible means of comprehending whether there is a link between heading the ball and neurological disease. The six post-mortems also found that four of the men, all but one professionals, had suffered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disorder. In the general population, there is a mere 12% incidence of CTE.

The research, funded by the Drake Foundation, puts pressure on the wealthy players’ union, the Professional Footballers’ Association, to initiate research into possible links between heading and brain disease. The union has been under fierce scrutiny since The Independent last month revealed the plight of Nobby Stiles, one of at least four members of the 1966 World Cup-winning team to have suffered from dementia. His family have received no support from the union and want his illness to trigger action to help others.

Stiles developed dementia at the age of 60, and another of the disclosures of the research by Swansea University and UCL, published in Acta Neuropathologica on Wednesday, is that the players in question were relatively young.

The study stated that the four CTE diagnoses were “probably related to their past prolonged exposure to repetitive head impacts from head-toplayer collisions and heading the ball thousands of times”. – The Independent