Dementia threat is wider than feared
Research links contact sport and brain diseases ‘CTE not the only brain damage’ players suffer
The link between contact sports and dementia extends beyond chronic traumatic encephalopathy to a much wider range of neurological diseases, according to new studies of the brains of former football and rugby players.
Although there has been an enormous focus on CTE following the neurological problems facing American footballers, the evolving weight of research, including the groundbreaking work at the University of Glasgow, is finding a mixture of brain diseases among those with a long history of head trauma.
A review of international scientific evidence has also reinforced a study in Italy which showed that footballers were more than six times more likely to suffer from motor neurone disease. Don Revie, Jimmy Johnstone, Fernando Ricksen, Len Johnrose and Stephen Darby are among the higher profile former footballers to have been diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Patrick Grange, the former Major League Soccer player whose brain was examined at Boston University, was found to have motor neurone disease as well as CTE.
CTE is the type of dementia that is most commonly linked to head trauma and was still found in around three-quarters of the 11 former footballers and rugby players with dementia in the Glasgow study. Most striking, however, was the prevalence of other dementias and neurological diseases within individual brains, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, chronic cerebrovascular disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.
All of those studied had played football or rugby over periods ranging from 11 to 32 years, and were not regularly exposed to other contact sports. The vast majority first showed dementia symptoms in their fifties or sixties and died before the age of 80. “The focus has been too narrow on CTE, which we show might be a ‘passenger’ pathology, and not the primary driver of dementia,” said Dr Willie Stewart, the lead investigator at Glasgow.
“What is striking is the degree of mixed pathologies. This is something we are aware of in wider dementias, but typically in ‘very old’ patients. These former players are not ‘very old’, and so it does raise a question why they have such complex pathology.” Dr Bennet Omalu, the doctor credited with identifying some of the first CTE cases in American football, is aware of the Glasgow research.
He said: “We need to move away from the monolithic way of thinking. CTE is not the only type of brain damage you suffer. Brain trauma increases your risk of suffering a variety of brain diseases.”