Furious Seasons

September 30, 2009

Study Shows High Rate Of Dementia In Retired NFL Players

The New York Times reported yesterday on an unpublished study of retired NFL players which shows a shockingly high rate of dementia in former players over 50 years of age. This comes on the heels of other research showing depression in former football players who'd suffered concussions during their playing days.

The prevalence of dementia in the 50 and above general population is a little over 1 percent. Among former NFLers over 50 researchers found it to be 6.1 percent, according to the paper. Players aged 30 to 49 had dementia at a 1.9 percent rate as opposed to the national average of .1 percent. The paper also notes that the study had some weakness in that it used a telephone survey method, but even if the numbers might be off a bit from what a harder scientific approach might show the results are very troubling.

I presume the dementia is related to concussions and that gives me a bit of concern for myself. I've experienced four full blown concussions in my life (one from skiing, one from hockey, one in a fight and one when I was attacked by a gang of 18-year-olds when I was 14) and I guess the time I saw stars at a high school football practice counts as a minor concussion. I guess I should start taking Aricept right now! Um, no.

I deeply love football (between college and the NFL, I watch seven games a week during the season), but it's clear something needs to be done about the number of concussions suffered, especially at the youth level, and the number of deaths (usually a few and we had one in Washington State this week) and paralyzations each year. I wouldn't begin to know what the solution is. Helmets are very, very good these days. The NCAA has banned head-to-head hits, but it's kind of hard to prevent what happens naturally in the course of tackling someone. It'll be interesting to see how the NFL addresses this matter or if it does at all.

I wrote about a spate of head injuries among high school football players in Oregon back in 2000.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at September 30, 2009 12:03 AM

del.icio.us Digg it reddit

Comments

In American and Canadian football, the equipment designed to stop injury encourages more force, leading to internal unseen brain injury (concussion). What? How? you say. Look at the British game of rugby(football), how many brain injuries do they have there? Black eyes , bruses and torn earlobes there.
But I don't see equipment being removed from football. Equipment was (however) slowly added from the invention of the sport.

Posted by: mark p.s.2 at September 30, 2009 04:21 AM

I don't think you should be concerned Philip. We can see that you were not affected by reading your blog.
Anyway, I prefer football.
I don't understand all those men together, I can't see the ball and have no idea about the rules.

Posted by: Ana at September 30, 2009 03:40 PM

Did you see that one article about football players donating their brains to science to study re: the TBI's they have had in their lives from this? very interesting.

Posted by: Stephany at September 30, 2009 03:57 PM

The UK rugby players picked up the story, so maybe they still do get the same number of head-brain injury without equipment.

LINK
Rugby players could be more at risk of Alzheimer's after study shows 'vastly higher rates' among American footballers
By Noel Young
Last updated at 12:42 AM on 1st October 2009

Rugby players could be at greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s than the general public after a study into the similar sport of American football found ‘vastly higher’ rates of the illness.

U.S. researchers found that former gridiron stars aged between 30 and 49 were 19 times more likely to suffer from the condition than average.

Posted by: mark p.s.2 at September 30, 2009 06:19 PM

Call me a cynic, but I somehow think long term use of steroids could be another variable in this equation along with the head injuries.

Posted by: marlborojones at September 30, 2009 06:26 PM