August 2, 2021

Latest results from the FIELD study (Football’s InfluencE on Lifelong health and Dementia risk)

Major new results from the FIELD (Football’s InfluencE on Lifelong health and Dementia risk) study were announced on Monday 2 August 2021.

FIELD is the largest study to date looking in detail at the risk of neurodegenerative disease in any sport, not just professional footballer players. The study compared health records of 7,676 former Scottish male professional football players who were born between 1900 and 1976 against those of more than 23,000 matched individuals from the general population.

Lead author of the study, Professor Willie Stewart, consultant neuropathologist and Honorary Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Glasgow, attended this briefing to discuss findings of this major new study with journalists, as well as answering questions on what these new data mean in the context of previous landmark FIELD studies.

A landmark FIELD study in 2019 found that found that former professional footballers had an approximately three and a half times higher rate of death due to neurodegenerative disease than expected.

Speakers included:

Prof Willie Stewart, consultant neuropathologist and Honorary Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Glasgow