Football May Cause Parkinson Disease

Early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD) depends on the identification of risk factors. Parkinson disease and parkinsonism, a general word used to describe the motor symptoms of Parkinson disease as well as other illnesses, have been linked to boxers since the 1920s. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is a long-term neurological consequence of repeated head hits from tackle football, is another possibility. However, there is little data on the link between tackle football activity and PD.

Researchers from the BU CTE Center found that participants with a history of playing organized tackle football had a 61% higher risk of receiving reported parkinsonism or PD diagnosis. This was the largest study to examine the relationship between participation in football and the likelihood of receiving a reported diagnosis of PD.

In this study, 1,875 athletes were analyzed, including 729 men who played football, mostly on an amateur level, and 1,146 men who participated in non-football sports as the control group. The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research recruited participants for Fox Insight, a long-term online study of persons with and without Parkinson’s disease.

Notably, even after taking into consideration recognized risk factors for PD, researchers still discovered a connection between playing football and higher chances of being diagnosed with Parkinsonism or PD. The data also showed that athletes with longer careers and higher levels of competition had a higher likelihood of receiving a reported diagnosis of parkinsonism or Parkinson’s disease (PD). Comparing football players who only played at the youth or high school level to those who participated at the college or professional levels, there was a 2.93 increase in the likelihood of receiving a PD diagnosis. The probabilities of being diagnosed with parkinsonism or Parkinson’s disease were not correlated with the age at which a person first played football.

“Playing tackle football could be a contributing risk factor to PD, particularly among people already at risk due to other factors (e.g., family history). However, the reasons for this relationship are not clear and we also know that not everyone who plays tackle football will develop later-life neurological conditions, meaning many other risk factors are at play,” says corresponding author Michael L. Alosco, PhD, associate professor of neurology at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

A notable strength of the study, as noted by the researchers, was that they contrasted football players with another group of athletes. In addition, unlike the majority of earlier studies that mostly focused on professional athletes, the majority of participants in this study only participated in tackle football at the amateur level.

“Previous research has focused on the association between American football and risk for CTE. However, similar to what has historically been seen in boxers, American football might also affect risk for other neurodegenerative conditions such as PD,” says Hannah Bruce, MSc, first author and research specialist at BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

The researchers warn that the work is still in its early stages and note various limitations with their findings. The majority of the participants in the convenience sample were white, which limited the generalizability of the results. Through online tests, participants also self-reported their diagnosis of PD; objective in-person examinations were not carried out.

Source Link