Dementia in football/soccer players: professional resistance to a new cause of neurodegenerative disease

Abstract

Football is popular world wide, and in the U.S. the sport is known as soccer. This game consists of two teams of eleven players using a spherical ball. Dementia, a tragic progressive neurodegenerative disease has been recognised in boxing for over a century, and this paper explores its emergence in football. Heading the ball is a feature of the game, producing repetitive subconcussive brain injuries. Dementia in football/soccer only emerged at the end of the 20th century in Scotland. The author had been alerted to the issue in 1981; his observational study, including some neuropathological findings, of 14 players was eventually published in 2017. This was the first study in the world to show a link between football and the development of dementia. The difficulties of getting the results published, including the vulnerability of the brain to repetitive subconcussive injuries, are described and the resistance to the idea is explored. These include the conservative nature of the medical profession, the rigidity of Evidence Based Medicine and the role of Paul McCrory. These negative attitudes delayed the development of a more enlightened dementia management and prevention strategy in football.