The violent shocks that footballers receive on the head cause trauma to the brain and are involved in the onset of dementia and neurodegenerative diseases, according to the results of a study published in the medical journal Acta Neuropathologica. Amateur footballers would not be affected by this phenomenon.
Researchers from the Institute of Neurology at University College London (UK) conducted a study with fourteen former footballers, including thirteen professionals, who suffered from dementia and were hospitalized in Swansea, Wales between 1980 and 2010.
Repetitive impacts involved in trauma
Scientists performed six autopsies, four showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain condition often implicated in former American footballers and former boxers, two extremely violent sports.
According to the results of the study, the former players, whose autopsies showed that they had ETC, also had the Alzheimer’s disease. “Our results show a potential link between playing football and ETC. But, the link between the two conditions remains unclear,” explained Dr Ling. “It is likely that it was a combination of these two diseases that caused dementia in these former footballers,” explained Dr Helen Ling, from the Institute of Neurology at University College London (UCL).
For researchers, football injuries are rather caused by “non-concussive repetitive impacts”. Indeed, unlike boxers or American footballers, footballers are rarely victims of blows to the head that are sufficiently violent to cause them to lose consciousness.
Since this study was conducted with a small number of participants, the researchers said that a larger cohort was needed to confirm these initial results.
“There is an urgent need to identify these risks,” she insisted. “A large-scale study is essential and the cooperation of professional organisations, the FA and Fifa will be necessary.”
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