A considerable increase in dementia risk was seen among top Swedish football players over the past century, with the exception of goalkeepers, a comprehensive study found on Friday.
According to experts, the study adds to the "convincing evidence" that the most popular sport in the world is associated with a higher risk of degenerative brain disorders. It also comes as head injury controversies rage in other codes, like rugby and the NFL.
Football may be less prone to catastrophic brain injuries like concussions than those sports, but the frequent heading of the ball by football players has been linked to dementia in the past.
The new study, which was released in The Lancet Public Health journal, examined more than 6,000 male football players' medical files from Sweden's top league from 1924 to 2019.
The researchers compared their rates of several degenerative brain diseases to those of 56,000 Swedish males of a comparable age.
The study found that the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease among footballers was 1.5 times higher than that of the control group.
Goalkeepers were an exception since they didn't have an increased risk of developing degenerative brain illnesses despite having little need to head the ball.
The study's principal author, Peter Ueda of Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, told AFP that this finding supports the theory that heading the ball may explain this link.
Ueda claimed that it was the broadest study on the topic since a 2019 Scottish study that revealed players were 3.5 times more likely to develop degenerative brain problems than the general population.
Footballers lived slightly longer than men of a comparable age, according to the Swedish study, which Ueda suggested may be due to their higher levels of activity and socioeconomic standing as elite athletes.
The researchers discovered that football players had a lower risk of Parkinson's disease and no increased risk of motor neuron illnesses like ALS.
Ueda issued a warning, noting that the observational study's findings could not be generalized to female, amateur, or juvenile football and did not establish a causal link between playing football and dementia.
Several of the players included in the study were active throughout the mid-20th century due to the long lag between playing football and the onset of certain brain illnesses.
According to Ueda, this indicates that more modern professional players may have played the game safely in the past with better tools, information, and training.
He continued, "But you might also argue that modern athletes are exposed to demanding football from a very young age, so perhaps the danger would even be higher among them.
The "high-quality article" contributed to the "convincing data" that football players whose heads make contact with the ball are at an increased risk of dementia, according to Gill Livingston, professor of psychiatry of older people at University College London.
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