An expert leading a new study into the links between football and dementia fears that female footballers are at more at risk than male players of suffering with the syndrome.
Professional sports have begun to recognise that concussions and actions such as heading a football have caused players to develop the debilitating neurological disease in later life.
Their campaigning lead to a two-year study conducted by the University of Glasgow in 2017.
In October 2019, the University of Glasgow published the results of their FIELD study which revealed that male footballers were around three-and-a-half times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than the general population.
But what about women?
The Alzheimer’s Society website states that worldwide, women with dementia outnumber men two to one, while John Hopkins University’s sports medicine page states that “studies have shown that female athletes who sustain concussions are more likely to have more severe and longer-lasting symptoms than male athletes”.
And Dr Michael Grey, who is the lead researcher of a the new £1million SCORES Project (Screening Cognitive Outcomes after Repetitive head impact Exposure in Sport) conducted at the University of East Anglia’s, believes that women athletes may be at greater risk, partly due to an under-representation in studies and because their sports are still developing.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the prevalence of dementia among women footballers compared to general population was a slightly bigger issue for women than for men,” he told the PA news agency.
“Women are really under-represented in this conversation. It’s not likely that we will get a 50-50 split (of volunteers), just because there aren’t that many women professionals of an age that we’ll be looking at.
“However, the plan is that we start right away with an emphasis on recruiting women as well, and we’ll be able to follow them for the rest of their lives.”
As reported by the Evening Standard, UEA’s project will use gaming technology to test former professional football players for early signs of dementia.
The university has previously developed a mobile-based programme to help detect people at risk of Alzheimer’s, and this technology will be used in the new trials.
The project will focus predominantly on players from the East of England, but it is hoped the trials will be extended nationally later this year.
