Playing Football May Increase the Risk for Parkinson’s Disease
Identifying risk factors for Parkinson’s disease (PD) is essential to early diagnosis. Dating back to the 1920s, Parkinson’s disease and parkinsonism—an umbrella term that refers to motor symptoms found in Parkinson’s disease and other conditions—have long been described in boxers. Repetitive head impacts from tackle football can also have long-term neurological consequences like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), but research on the association between participation in tackle football and PD is limited.
In the largest study to describe the association between football participation and the odds for having a reported diagnosis of PD, researchers from the BU CTE Center used a large online dataset of people concerned about having PD and found participants with a history of playing organized tackle football had 61% increased odds of having a reported Parkinsonism or PD diagnosis. In this study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers evaluated 1,875 sport participants: 729 men who played football, predominantly at the amateur level, and 1,146 men who played other sports who served as the control group.
“Notably, we found a link between playing football and increased odds for having a parkinsonism or PD diagnosis even after accounting for known risk factors for PD,” says corresponding author Michael L. Alosco, PhD, associate professor of neurology and codirector of clinical research at the BU CTE Center.
They also found 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 college or professional level were at 2.93% increased odds for having a PD diagnosis compared with those who played only at the youth or high school level. Age of first exposure to football was not associated with odds for having a reported Parkinsonism or PD diagnosis.