Even after controlling for established Parkinson’s Disease risk factors, the researchers found a link between playing football and a higher chance of being diagnosed with parkinsonism or Parkinson’s disease.
Since the 1920s, boxers have been known to have Parkinson’s disease and parkinsonism, a term comprising the motor symptoms found in Parkinson’s disease and associated diseases.
It has recently come to light that American football’s frequent head hits can have long-lasting neurological effects like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The relationship between tackle football and Parkinson’s disease, however, is not well understood.
About what is the study?
In order to investigate the relationship between playing football and the risk of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, researchers at Boston University’s CTE Centre used a sizable online dataset of people concerned about the disease.
According to their research, people who had previously played organized tackle football had a 61% higher chance of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease or parkinsonism.
In this study, the team evaluated 1,875 athletes, including 729 men who played football, mostly at the amateur level, and 1,146 men who participated in non-football activities, who served as the control group.
These participants took part in Fox Insight, an ongoing online study on people with and without Parkinson’s disease that is funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Even after controlling for established Parkinson’s Disease risk factors, the researchers found a link between playing football and a higher chance of being diagnosed with parkinsonism or Parkinson’s disease.
The data also showed that players with longer careers and those who played at higher levels had a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
Compared to those who only played at the juvenile or high school level, football players who played at the college or professional level had a 2.93-fold higher risk of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
It’s interesting to note that the age at which people started playing football was not associated with the risk of being diagnosed with parkinsonism or Parkinson’s disease.
What is the final conclusion?
The comparison of football players to a particular set of athletes was one of the study’s strengths, according to the researchers. In addition, a noteworthy feature of the study was that, in contrast to earlier studies that mostly concentrated on professional athletes, the majority of participants played tackle football at the amateur level.