Rugby chiefs urged to reduce matches over fears ex-players are developing brain diseases | UK News
Rugby captains are being urged to reduce the number of games by a head injury expert behind a study that found an increased risk of former players developing brain disease.
Research led by the University of Glasgow on brain injuries in former athletes found that men who played professional rugby were more than twice as likely to develop neurodegenerative disease.
Neuropathy consultant Professor Willie Stewart said the findings should be a stimulus for rugby to work faster before – after “fairly slow” progress – to reduce the risks of playing the sport this.
The expansion is on the rugby union agenda with discussions about the creation of a new men’s global competition to be held by the nations between the four-year World Cups.
Professor Stewart said: “Instead of talking about extending seasons and introducing new competitions and global seasons, they should be talking about limiting it as much as possible, cutting down on the amount of rugby football. that we are looking at and remove as much training as possible.
“Things like that have to be resolved fairly quickly.”
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The Football Association provided some funding for the study, which expanded on a 2019 report by Professor Stewart’s team that found former professional male soccer players had higher rates of death from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s is 3.5 times higher than in the general population.
Football has made moves to reduce headlines.
Professor Stewart said the preference in rugby, with its higher impact exposure, should reduce the risk of repetitive head injuries and conduct further studies.
His latest study examined the health of 412 Scots who played international rugby against 1,200 people in general.
Ryan Jones has revealed that he is suffering from early stage dementia
Research shows that the risk of being diagnosed with motor neurone disease is 15 times higher in retired footballers.
He said: “Look at the number of games going on and ask, ‘Is it believable that young men and women can play all week, all week, for most of the year just to play the game? mind?”
“I know it’s hard to think about having less rugby than more but maybe less is more if you see better quality rugby, less damaged and less tired players.
“You can’t keep putting young men and women through what they’re going through because now we know even from the amateur era there is a risk of this brain disease.”
Professor Jonathan Cook, associate professor and medical statistician at the University of Oxford, said the findings seemed “disturbing” while saying that “the number of neurodegenerative diseases occurring, thankfully , is still relatively small”.
