Study Indicates Higher Rate of Dementia in Former N.F.L. Players

[undeterred]

Source: The New York Times

A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often than in the national population — including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.

The N.F.L. has long denied the existence of reliable data about cognitive decline among its players. These numbers would become the league’s first public affirmation of any connection.

The findings could ring loud at all levels of football, including youth and college programs, which often take cues from the N.F.L. on safety policies and whose players emulate their professional heroes. Hundreds of on-field concussions are sustained at every level each week, with many going undiagnosed and untreated; few concussions are as well known as that of Tim Tebow, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback from Florida, who was hospitalized after a blow to the head in a game last Saturday.

A detailed summary of the N.F.L. study, which was conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, was distributed to league officials this month and obtained by The New York Times. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and the survey method by which it determined prevalence rates is known to have limitations. But the findings fall into step with several independent academic studies conducted over the past five years regarding N.F.L. players and the effects of their occupational head injuries.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/sports/football/30dementia.html?hp

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Did you forget that you've already posted this?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[undeterred]

2. Posted what?

:hi:

[Sabriel]

3. And former Favre fans

Or so I hear.

[PVnRT]

7. That makes no sense

[PRETZEL]

4. That surely makes sense,

especially for linemen. They're the ones who I would guess lead the group in that category. For those who remember the sad saga of Mike Webster I would like to think would agree.

Hopefully with the advances in equipment that's been made and continues to be made, if this study is updated every 5 years, we'll start to see this trend slow some.

[NJmaverick]

5. Those qualifiers about the study are pretty serious

and I think this article under plays their siginficance. I am not suggesting that there isn't problems with the multiple concussions suffered by NFL players, but I do think it's important to base opinion on sound data.

[Iggo]

6. I gotta get me some study money.

Men who frequently get hit in the head more likely to have brain problems than men who don't frequently get hit in the head.

[Ex Lurker]

8. I know a former NFL player

not a name anyone would recognize, a journeyman, but he spent over a decade in the league. He's my age (late forties) but looks at least ten years older and has myriad physical problems. He openly says he doesn't think he'll see his 65th birthday.