National Football League (NFL) players are three times more likely to die from neurodegenerative diseases than the general US population and four times more likely to die from Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a study published in the September 5 online Neurology.
“Although the results of our study do not establish a cause-effect relationship between football-related concussion and death from neurodegenerative disorders, they do provide additional support for the finding that professional football players are at an increased risk of death from neurodegenerative causes,” said Everett J. Lehman, MS, an occupational epidemiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Cincinnati, part of the CDC.
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