Football players at increased risk for Parkinson’s disease, study finds

Identification of risk aspects for Parkinson’s disease (PD) is crucial for early diagnosis. Dating back to the Twenties, Parkinson’s disease and parkinsonism-;an umbrella term that refers to motor symptoms present in Parkinson’s disease and in addition other conditions-;have long been described in boxers. Repetitive head impacts from tackle football can even have long-term neurological consequences like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). But research on the association between participation in tackle football and PD is restricted.

In the biggest study to explain the association between participation in football and the chances for having a reported diagnosis of PD, researchers from the BU CTE Center used a big online data set of individuals concerned for having PD and located participants with a history of playing organized tackle football had a 61% increased odds of getting a reported parkinsonism or PD diagnosis.

On this study, the researchers evaluated 1,875 sport participants -; 729 men who played football, predominantly on the amateur level, and 1,146 men who played non-football sports who served because the control group. Participants were enrolled in Fox Insight, a longitudinal online study of individuals with and without PD sponsored by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Notably, researchers found a link between playing football and increased odds for having a parkinsonism or PD diagnosis even after accounting for known risk aspects for PD. Moreover, the information revealed that players who had longer careers and played at higher levels of competition experienced increased odds for having a reported diagnosis of parkinsonism or PD. Football players who played at the school or skilled level were at 2.93 increased odds for having a PD diagnosis compared with those that just played on the youth or highschool level. Age of first exposure to football was not related to odds for having a reported parkinsonism or PD diagnosis.

Playing tackle football may very well be a contributing risk factor to PD, particularly amongst people already in danger because of other aspects (e.g., family history). Nevertheless, the explanations for this relationship will not be clear and we also know that not everyone who plays tackle football will develop later-life neurological conditions, meaning many other risk aspects are at play.”

Michael L. Alosco, PhD, corresponding creator, associate professor of neurology at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

The researchers also emphasized that they compared the football players to a different group of athletes, a noteworthy strength of the study. Moreover, a lot of the participants played tackle football only on the amateur level, which is contrast to a lot of the research thus far that has focused on skilled athletes.

“Previous research has focused on the association between American football and risk for CTE. Nevertheless, just like what has historically been seen in boxers, American football may additionally affect risk for other neurodegenerative conditions reminiscent of PD,” says Hannah Bruce, MSc, first creator and research specialist at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

The researchers acknowledge several limitations to their findings and caution that the work continues to be preliminary. It was a convenience sample of individuals enriched for having PD who were mostly white, thereby limiting the generalizability of the findings. Diagnosis of PD was also self-reported by participants through online assessments and objective in-person evaluations weren’t conducted.

This work was in collaboration with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the sponsor of Fox Insight. The Fox Insight study was used to gather and aggregate data utilized in this manuscript. Grant funding was also from NINDS (U54NS115266; K23NS102399).