Post-mortem examinations of former football players have found evidence of a type of damage linked to dementia, researchers report today.
A series of six post-mortems were taken by a team led by Dr Helen Ling of University College London, UK. All participants had been referred to the Old Age Psychiatry Service in Swansea, Wales, between 1980 and 2010.
Analysis of the brains found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a potential cause of dementia caused by repeated blows to the head, in four of the six brains. The rate in the general population is 12%. Furthermore, the team reports that all six brains had signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy and Alzheimer’s disease both involve a build-up of abnormal tau protein in the brain, say the researchers today (15 February) in Acta Neuropathologica. But chronic traumatic encephalopathy causes tau to accumulate in a distinctive pattern.
"This is the first time chronic traumatic encephalopathy has been confirmed in a group of retired footballers," said Dr Ling. "Our findings of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in retired footballers suggest a potential link between playing football and the development of degenerative brain pathologies in later life.
"However, it is important to note that we only studied a small number of retired footballers with dementia and that we still do not know how common dementia is among footballers."
She adds that all of the players whose brain autopsies showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy also had Alzheimer’s pathology, "but the relationship between the two diseases remains unclear".
"The most pressing research question is therefore to find out if dementia is more common in footballers than in the normal population," she concludes.
Ling, H. et al. Acta Neuropathologica 15 February 2017
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