2 days ago
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A caller survey has recovered nary grounds that the precocious dementia hazard among footballers is linked to wellness and manner factors.
It increases the likelihood that heading footballs has caused encephalon injuries.
The probe was led by Glasgow University's Professor Willie Stewart, who 5 years agone discovered footballers were three-and-a-half times much apt to dice from a neurodegenerative illness than the mean population.
"Our information suggests this narration betwixt higher rates of neurodegenerative illness among erstwhile nonrecreational footballers is not driven by those wider wide wellness and manner factors, wide recognised arsenic dementia hazard factors," said Professor Stewart.
"In the past, we would accidental that we felt the strongest hazard was astir apt to bash with caput injuries and caput impacts successful sport, but we couldn't beryllium definite that their narration to alcohol. smoking, diabetes oregon humor unit - these different hazard factors mightiness beryllium involved.
"Now, we really know, having looked astatine the data, that these different hazard factors don't look to beryllium contributing to the dementia risk."
A radical of families - including relatives of the precocious 1966 World Cup victor Nobby Stiles - are taking ineligible action against shot authorities implicit what they accidental are encephalon injuries caused by repeated impacts betwixt caput and ball.
Two erstwhile Premier League players - Gary Pallister and Steve Howey - person told BBC Sport of their wellness fears aft years of heading footballs.
Howey, who is 1 of the claimants successful the ineligible action, said helium has undergone scans which person shown cognitive decline.
Leading campaigner Judith Gates, of Head Safe Football, has written to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy to inquire that heading the shot is declared a nationalist wellness contented successful bid to safeguard players successful the future.
Gates' hubby Bill, a erstwhile Middlesbrough defender, died past twelvemonth aged 79 arsenic a effect of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). She founded the Head Safe Football foundation to summation consciousness of the information of caput impacts and signs of caput injury.
The caller survey was funded by the Football Association, the Professional Footballers' Association, the Medical Research Council and the United States' National Institutes of Health.
Published successful aesculapian diary Jama Network Open, it looked astatine the physics wellness records of 11,984 erstwhile nonrecreational footballers and 35,952 matched individuals from the wide colonisation successful Scotland.
Researchers compared cardinal dementia hazard factors crossed the 2 groups, including a past of smoking, depression, alcohol-related disorders, diabetes, hypertension, proceeding nonaccomplishment and obesity.
Overall, the survey squad recovered that the rates of these hazard factors were akin - oregon little - among erstwhile players.
Former professionals were astatine little hazard of alcohol-related disorders, smoking, diabetes, and obesity. The probe recovered they were astatine akin hazard of proceeding loss, depression, and hypertension, compared with the wide population.
Stewart told BBC Sport the study "really moves the speech connected rather a bit".
He said: "What we're seeing is that these footballers are mostly steadfast men with bully lifestyles.
"Their humor unit is good, their value is good, they're not smoking, they're not drinking, but they've got a existent occupation with dementia, which is inactive there, and that we accidental is related to the caput injuries, the caput impacts successful sport. That's the occupation that we're dealing with here."
The FA said: "We proceed to put successful and enactment aggregate projects successful bid to summation a greater knowing of this country done objective, robust and thorough research.
"We person already taken galore proactive steps to reappraisal and code imaginable hazard factors which whitethorn beryllium associated with playing shot whilst ongoing probe continues."
The Professional Footballers' Association, the commercialized national for nonrecreational footballers successful England and Wales, has a dedicated encephalon wellness squad to enactment erstwhile members acrophobic astir encephalon wellness and educating existent players connected encephalon wellness successful football.
In September 2023 it launched the Football Brain Health Fund, making disposable an archetypal £1m to assistance erstwhile players and their families who person been impacted by dementia and different neurodegenerative conditions.
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