Elite footballers five times more likely to die from Alzheimer’s
But there's no need to panic, according to study editorial
A study of more than a thousand former professional football — or soccer — players in Scotland has uncovered significantly more deaths from neurodegenerative disease than among non-players.
Neurodegenerative diseases claimed the lives of 1.7% of the 1180 former Scottish footballers compared with 0.5% of 3807 non-players matched for gender, age, and socioeconomic status, the researchers say.
That’s more than a threefold increase, the findings in the New England Journal of Medicine show.
The rate of death from Alzheimer’s disease among players was five times higher, and the rate of death from Parkinson’s disease was twice as high, compared with the control group.
