Research from Professor Willie Stewart, who leads the FIELD study, previously found that former footballers are 3.5 times more likely to die with dementia than the general public.
The study, which compared health records of 7,676 Scottish male players, found that the risk increased with the length of their careers, but the findings remained the same for players regardless of the era in which they competed. "The data from this paper is the missing link in trying to understand this connection between sport and dementia... There is no other proposed risk factor and this is one we could really address and eliminate this disease.
Last week, the Football Association , Premier League and other governing bodies announced guidelines limiting"high-impact" headers to 10 per week in training from the 2021-22 season. [L4N2P424K]