Footballers 50% more likely to develop dementia, study finds

Footballers are 50% more likely to develop dementia than the rest of the population, a study has found, fuelling calls to restrict rules around heading the ball in football.

Researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in the Lancet Public Health journal today, compared the health records of 6,000 elite footballers and more than 56,000 non-footballers between 1924 and 2019.

They found that among male footballers playing in the Swedish top division, 9% were diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease, compared with 6% of the control sample.

The study examined differences in cognitive health for outfield players versus goalkeepers. Researchers discovered that outfield players had a 1.6 increased risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia than the wider population sample. But goalkeepers – who rarely head the ball – had no increased risk of Alzheimer’s or dementia, “supporting the hypothesis that mild head impacts sustained when heading the ball could explain the increased risk in outfield players,” the study concluded.

Peter Ueda, assistant professor at Karolinska Institutet and co-author of the study, said: “Importantly, our findings suggest that goalkeepers don’t have the same increased risk of neurodegenerative disease as outfield players. Goalkeepers rarely head the ball, unlike outfield players, but are exposed to similar environments and lifestyles during their football careers and perhaps also after retirement.”

In contrast, the authors found no significant risk increase for football players of contracting motor neurone disease, while the risk of Parkinson’s disease and overall mortality was lower among football players compared with the control group. The findings follow 2019 Scottish research