Neurodegenerative disorders have been reported in elite athletes who participated in contact sports. The incidence of neurodegenerative disease among former professional soccer players has not been ...well characterized.
We conducted a retrospective cohort study to compare mortality from neurodegenerative disease among 7676 former professional soccer players (identified from databases of Scottish players) with that among 23,028 controls from the general population who were matched to the players on the basis of sex, age, and degree of social deprivation. Causes of death were determined from death certificates. Data on medications dispensed for the treatment of dementia in the two cohorts were also compared. Prescription information was obtained from the national Prescribing Information System.
Over a median of 18 years, 1180 former soccer players (15.4%) and 3807 controls (16.5%) died. All-cause mortality was lower among former players than among controls up to the age of 70 years and was higher thereafter. Mortality from ischemic heart disease was lower among former players than among controls (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% confidence interval CI, 0.66 to 0.97; P = 0.02), as was mortality from lung cancer (hazard ratio, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.40 to 0.70; P<0.001). Mortality with neurodegenerative disease listed as the primary cause was 1.7% among former soccer players and 0.5% among controls (subhazard ratio the hazard ratio adjusted for competing risks of death from ischemic heart disease and death from any cancer, 3.45; 95% CI, 2.11 to 5.62; P<0.001). Among former players, mortality with neurodegenerative disease listed as the primary or a contributory cause on the death certificate varied according to disease subtype and was highest among those with Alzheimer's disease (hazard ratio former players vs. controls, 5.07; 95% CI, 2.92 to 8.82; P<0.001) and lowest among those with Parkinson's disease (hazard ratio, 2.15; 95% CI, 1.17 to 3.96; P = 0.01). Dementia-related medications were prescribed more frequently to former players than to controls (odds ratio, 4.90; 95% CI, 3.81 to 6.31; P<0.001). Mortality with neurodegenerative disease listed as the primary or a contributory cause did not differ significantly between goalkeepers and outfield players (hazard ratio, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.43 to 1.24; P = 0.24), but dementia-related medications were prescribed less frequently to goalkeepers (odds ratio, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.19 to 0.89; P = 0.02).
In this retrospective epidemiologic analysis, mortality from neurodegenerative disease was higher and mortality from other common diseases lower among former Scottish professional soccer players than among matched controls. Dementia-related medications were prescribed more frequently to former players than to controls. These observations need to be confirmed in prospective matched-cohort studies. (Funded by the Football Association and Professional Footballers' Association.).
Neurodegenerative disease mortality is higher among former professional soccer players than general population controls. However, the factors contributing to increased neurodegenerative disease ...mortality in this population remain uncertain.
To investigate the association of field position, professional career length, and playing era with risk of neurodegenerative disease among male former professional soccer players.
This cohort study used population-based health record linkage in Scotland to evaluate risk among 7676 male former professional soccer players born between January 1, 1900, and January 1, 1977, and 23 028 general population control individuals matched by year of birth, sex, and area socioeconomic status providing 1 812 722 person-years of follow-up. Scottish Morbidity Record and death certification data were available from January 1, 1981, to December 31, 2016, and prescribing data were available from January 1, 2009, to December 31, 2016. Database interrogation was performed on December 10, 2018, and data were analyzed between April 2020 and May 2021.
Participation in men's soccer at a professional level.
Outcomes were obtained by individual-level record linkage to national electronic records of mental health and general hospital inpatient and day-case admissions as well as prescribing information and death certification. Risk of neurodegenerative disease was evaluated between former professional soccer players and matched general population control individuals.
In this cohort study of 30 704 male individuals, 386 of 7676 former soccer players (5.0%) and 366 of 23 028 matched population control individuals (1.6%) were identified with a neurodegenerative disease diagnosis (hazard ratio HR, 3.66; 95% CI, 2.88-4.65; P < .001). Compared with the risk among general population control individuals, risk of neurodegenerative disease was highest for defenders (HR, 4.98; 95% CI, 3.18-7.79; P < .001) and lowest for goalkeepers (HR, 1.83; 95% CI, 0.93-3.60; P = .08). Regarding career length, risk was highest among former soccer players with professional career lengths longer than 15 years (HR, 5.20; 95% CI, 3.17-8.51; P < .001). Regarding playing era, risk remained similar for all players born between 1910 and 1969.
The differences in risk of neurodegenerative disease observed in this cohort study imply increased risk with exposure to factors more often associated with nongoalkeeper positions, with no evidence this association has changed over the era studied. While investigations to confirm specific factors contributing to increased risk of neurodegenerative disease among professional soccer players are required, strategies directed toward reducing head impact exposure may be advisable in the meantime.
Following significant social and legal challenges to Australia’s colonial policy of ‘offshoring’ immigration detention, the system has become more mobile and diffuse, expanding through a range of ...new, ad-hoc, and established detention sites both ‘on’ and ‘offshore’. Refugees, asylum seekers and other non-citizens are frequently transferred and dispersed between these sites, which form ‘spaces of disappearance’. In this article, we draw upon concepts of racial surveillance capitalism and data justice to analyse a work by the Manus Recording Project Collective, titled where are you today, that sought to expose and counter the colonial border’s disappearing effects. The work involved the creation and distribution of audio-recordings from inside detention sites to subscribers. Recordings were distributed via text messages that also plotted individual subscribers in spatiotemporal relation to the detained artists that created them. The Collective thereby appropriated the tools of surveillance capitalism – such as GPS tracking and timestamping – to create dynamic digital cartographies of the mobile-carceral border. Through studying this work, we aim to deepen understandings of colonial bordering practices and highlight possibilities for disrupting the social divisions and exclusions that they reproduce.
This article provides an analysis of sonic protest strategies used by anti-carceral feminist coalitions in Melbourne, Australia. Our research demonstrates that sound is a particularly powerful ...boundary-crosser that can challenge the exclusionary spatial ordering of the prison. Under certain political and geographical conditions, the carceral soundscape, which increasingly restricts ‘who gets to hear what’, can be temporarily breached, altered and re-made by protest noise, rhythm and music, and radio technology. Counter-carceral acoustemologies create alternative ‘soundtracks’ of resistance that both reveal and momentarily displace carceral-spatial control, re-patterning the aural environment of the prison. Such breaches can be countered, however, by various modes of boundary fortification over time. We propose that a more nuanced understanding of carceral space and soundscapes—as relational and in flux—provides greater opportunities for denaturalizing the prison and challenging its seeming permanence in our political and cultural landscapes.
Researchers in cognitive and forensic psychology have long been interested in the impact of individual differences on eyewitness memory. The sex of the eyewitness is one such factor, with a body of ...research spanning over 50 years that has sought to determine if and how eyewitness memory differs between males and females. This research has significant implications across the criminal justice system, particularly in the context of gendered issues such as sexual assault. However, the findings have been inconsistent, and there is still a lack of consensus across the literature. A scoping review and analysis of the literature was performed to examine the available evidence regarding whether sex differences in eyewitness memory exist, what explanations have been proposed for any differences found, and how this research has been conducted. Through a strategic search of seven databases, 22 relevant articles were found and reviewed. Results demonstrated that despite the mixed nature of the methodologies and findings, the research suggests that neither males nor females have superior performance in the total amount of accurate information reported, but rather that females may have better memory for person-related details while males may perform better for details related to the surrounding environment. There was also consistent evidence for the own-gender bias. There was some consensus that differences in selective attention between males and females may underlie these sex differences in eyewitness memory. However, none of the studies directly tested this suggested attentional factor, and thus future research is needed to investigate this using a more systematic and empirical approach.
There is growing recognition of an association between contact sports participation and increased risk of neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer's disease and chronic traumatic ...encephalopathy. In addition to cognitive impairment, a range of mental health disorders and suicidality are proposed as diagnostic features of traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, the putative clinical syndrome associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. However, to date, epidemiological data on contact sport participation and mental health outcomes are limited.
For a cohort of former professional soccer players (n=7676) with known high neurodegenerative mortality and their matched general population controls (n=23 028), data on mental health outcomes were obtained by individual-level record linkage to national electronic records of hospital admissions and death certification.
Compared with matched population controls, former professional soccer players showed lower risk of hospital admission for anxiety and stress related disorders, depression, drug use disorders, alcohol use disorders and bipolar and affective mood disorders. Among soccer players, there was no significant difference in risk of hospitalisation for mental health disorders between outfield players and goalkeepers. There was no significant difference in rate of death by suicide between soccer players and controls.
Among a population of former professional soccer players with known high neurodegenerative disease mortality, hospital admissions for common mental health disorders were lower than population controls, with no difference in suicide. Our data provide support for the reappraisal of currently proposed diagnostic clinical criteria for traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, in particular the inclusion of mental health outcomes.
This paper reflects upon the adoption of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) rights discourse and imagery in police public relations and problematises the construction of police ...as protectors and defenders of gay liberties and homonormative life. Building from a foundational conceptualisation of policing as a racial capitalist project, it analyses the phenomenon of police rainbow branding practiced in nominally public spaces, such as Pride parades, and online through news media and social networking sites. Drawing on critiques of queer liberalism and complicities with state violence, the paper explores the contours of carceral homonationalism, arguing that ‘officially anti-homophobic’ police image work attempts to obscure the role of the carceral state in (re)producing sexual and gender oppression. However, this image work has also given rise to new forms of political action. Counter-movements against police and ‘carceral pride’ are actively reworking the distributions of space and visibility within LGBTI movements.
New technologies for recording, reproducing, and disseminating sound are increasingly accessible and provide important opportunities for listening to accounts of confinement. Through a politics and ...practice of ‘earwitnessing detention’, this article explores experiential patterns and distinctions between immigration detention and imprisonment. By ‘tuning in’ to radio and podcasting emerging from and through carceral spaces, we argue that both detained asylum seekers and Aboriginal prisoners in Australia narrate an experience of ‘indefinite stuckness’. Indefinite stuckness is an existential condition within a carceral continuum that is both spatial and temporal, and characterised by massive racial inequalities. For detained asylum seekers, indefinite stuckness manifests in the absence of a set release date, whereas for Aboriginal prisoners, it is a cycle of criminalisation and re-incarceration in the colony. This important distinction shapes how detention is represented: as torturous and abusive, or as an opportunity for respite from the ‘chaos’ outside. Linking these sometimes-divergent accounts of confinement are themes of friendship and community as forms of survival and resistance to the abjection that frequently accompanies indefinite stuckness.
Autopsy studies of former contact sports athletes, including soccer and rugby players, frequently report chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative pathology associated with traumatic ...brain injury. Nevertheless, little is known about the risk of neurodegenerative disease in these populations. We hypothesised that neurodegenerative disease risk would be higher among former elite rugby union players than the general population.
We conducted a retrospective cohort study accessing national electronic records on death certification, hospital admissions and dispensed prescriptions for a cohort of 412 male Scottish former international rugby union players and 1236 members of the general population, matched to former players by age, sex and area socioeconomic status. Mortality and incident neurodegenerative disease diagnoses among former rugby players were then compared with the matched comparison group.
Over a median 32 years follow-up from study entry at age 30 years, 121 (29.4%) former rugby players and 381 (30.8%) of the matched comparison group died. All-cause mortality was lower among former rugby players until 70 years of age with no difference thereafter. During follow-up, 47 (11.4%) former rugby players and 67 (5.4%) of the comparison group were diagnosed with incident neurodegenerative disease (HR 2.67, 95% CI 1.67 to 4.27, p<0.001).
This study adds to our understanding of the association between contact sports participation and the risk of neurodegenerative disease. While further research exploring this interaction is required, in the meantime strategies to reduce exposure to head impacts and head injuries in sport should be promoted.
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