120 former footballers wanted for Glasgow study into dementia risk
The £1.3m BrainHOPE study is being led by the University of Glasgow
Researchers are aiming to recruit 120 middle-aged, former professional footballers as part of a new £1.3 million study investigating possible ways to reduce dementia risk among such ex-players and wider society.
The study by BrainHOPE will last four years and is being led by the University of Glasgow, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, with funding coming jointly from the Football Association and FIFA.
BrainHOPE (Optimising Brain Health Outcomes in former Professional and Elite footballers) will build on previous ground-breaking observations, which found risk of dementia among former professional footballers was around three and a half times higher than expected and will use brain imaging and a range of tests to compare brain health in mid-life former footballers to general population control subjects.
In a world’s first, researchers will explore whether any differences in brain health among footballers might benefit from management of known dementia risk factors designed to try and their reduce risk.
To do this, BrainHOPE will recruit 120 former professional footballers aged 40-59 years to compare against 700 general population controls. The effectiveness of Brain Health Clinic management will then be explored within the footballer subjects, with the brains scans and tests repeated again after two years.
Prof Willie Stewart, BrainHOPE lead, consultant neuropathologist and Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow, said: “This is an incredibly important study, and we are grateful to the FA and FIFA for their support to allow it to proceed. Our findings from the FIELD study show there is reason to worry about lifelong brain health in former footballers."
Stewart also hopes that the study can drive wider change and help all people, not just footballers, who are at the risk of suffering from dementia: "The reason we have brought this study forward is because we want to make change.
"There are an awful lot of men and women, middle aged, who are just sitting there knowing there is a risk of dementia but not being able to do anything.
"This gives us a chance to try and figure out what is happening inside the brain and more importantly what can people do to reduce the risk going forward.
"Anything we learn about mid-life dementia and about how it might emerge or how we might detect it early on is actually relevant to everyone else as well."
Charlotte Cowie, Head of Performance Medicine at the FA, said: “The launch of the BrainHope study is another important step in building our understanding of the long-term health of former professional footballers.
"Forming part of the wider Prevent Dementia study, this research will help us further understand the links between the game and neurodegenerative diseases and also potential early interventions which could help reduce risk or speed of developing dementia.”
The 2019 FIELD study – led by Professor Willie Stewart – remains the largest study to date looking in detail at the risk of neurodegenerative disease in any sport.
The study compared health records of 7,676 former Scottish male professional football players who were born between 1900 and 1976 against those of more than 23,000 matched individuals from the general population. Neurodegenerative disease risk among former football players relative to matched controls was then calculated for a range of player positions and career lengths and for decade of birth.
Since the 2019 study, professional clubs in the UK have been made to direct to limit "high force" headers, which follow a long pass of more than 35 metres (115 feet) or from crosses, corners and free-kicks to 10 per training week.
Children across the country under the age of 11 are not allowed to head the ball in training at any level, whilst 11-18 year olds can head the ball but on a "low priority".