{"id":751003,"date":"2026-07-08T18:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/751003\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T18:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:31:08","slug":"new-study-finds-nfl-players-nearly-four-times-more-likely-to-die-of-neurodegenerative-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/751003\/","title":{"rendered":"New study finds NFL players nearly four times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new study from Mass General Brigham, Boston University, and the Concussion &amp; CTE Foundation has concluded that NFL players have a higher risk of death due to neurodegenerative disease than the general population.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly four times higher.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the clearest population-level evidence we have ever had that NFL players are dying due to neurodegenerative disease at <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.massgeneralbrigham.org\/en\/about\/newsroom\/press-releases\/nfl-players-four-times-more-likely-to-suffer-neurodegenerative-mortality\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">real and measurably higher rates<\/a>,\u201d said Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, the Chair of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School and director of the HealthSpan Lab. \u201cThis study demonstrates that, when looking at athletes who have played in an NFL game, including nearly 20,000 players, across every official cause of death, the result is the same: NFL players are dying of dementia and Parkinson\u2019s disease three to four times more often than they should.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The broad term \u201cneurodegenerative disease\u201d includes ALS, Parkinson\u2019s disease, and dementia.<\/p>\n<p>Length of NFL career, not surprisingly, was a factor. The study found that players with five or more seasons had \u201cnearly double the risk\u201d of neurodegenerative death in comparison to those who spent one-to-four years in the NFL.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA fourfold increase in dementia rates from a presumed environmental cause is immense \u2014 and brain bank studies indicate that CTE is the primary explanation,\u201d said Dr. Jesse Mez, Associate Director of the Boston University Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Research Center and Co-Director of Clinical Research at the BU CTE Center. \u201cTo put that in perspective, heavy lead exposure, which was banned from paint and gasoline in the U.S. due to its neurological and cardiovascular consequences, leads to a 2-to-3 times greater rate of dementia and a 1.5 times greater rate of cardiovascular death.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that NFL players generally live longer than non-NFL players. Per the study, \u201cthe same genetic, environmental, medical, and behavioral characteristics that enable individuals to become professional athletes \u2014 such as exceptional physical and cognitive performance, resilience, self-discipline, as well as lower rates of smoking and serious early illnesses and injuries \u2014 also contribute to longer overall survival.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A previous study of 19,423 players who played at least one NFL game from 1960 through 2019 concluded that pro football players had a <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/34910152\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">risk of developing ALS<\/a> that was four times higher than the general population.<\/p>\n<p>Again, NFL players routinely say they signed up for the risk of injury. They all need to be aware that, beyond the immediate injury risk, there are long-term risks to playing.<\/p>\n<p>And many sports entail risks of head trauma, including hockey, soccer, boxing, and other combat sports.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of the sport, the vast majority who have the ability to play at the highest level would still choose to play. They should nevertheless be aware of the risks they are assuming when deciding whether to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new study from Mass General Brigham, Boston University, and the Concussion &amp; CTE Foundation has concluded that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-751003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}