Individual and cumulative health afflictions are associated with greater impairment in physical and mental function in former professional American style football players.
Adam S Tenforde, Bryan Cortez, Elaine Coughlan-Gifford and 9 others
PMID 33644969WHAT IT FOUND
Former NFL players with more self-reported health conditions reported worse physical and mental function.
Chronic pain had the strongest association; sleep apnea, cardiometabolic disease, and neurocognitive impairment were also associated with impairment.
Key findings
01Players with more afflictions reported worse function: compared with those with none, one, two, and three afflictions were associated with twofold, nearly threefold, and fivefold increased risk of impaired physical and mental function.
02Chronic pain, defined by current pain medication prescription, had the strongest association with both impaired mental and physical function.
03Accounting for age, race, position, seasons, age at first football exposure, alcohol, tobacco use, and BMI, most individual afflictions were associated with higher likelihood of impaired physical and mental function.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 3913 of 15611 surveyed players responded, a 25.1% response rate, so the sample may not represent all former NFL players. All conditions and function were self-reported, and diagnoses or medication use were not confirmed by records or examination. Because the study measured everything at one time point, it cannot show which came first or whether an affliction caused impaired function. There was no control group for comparison. Affliction definitions were conservative and may undercount conditions, especially chronic pain if players did not seek treatment. Some demographic and exposure variables had missing responses that were kept as missing categories.
Declared interests
The study was supported by the Football Player Health Study at Harvard University, funded by the NFL Players Association, with additional funding reported from NIH/NHLBI and the American Heart Association. Some authors reported royalties, honoraria, advisory roles with companies, and patient-care funding from the NFL Players Association.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these associations as proof that treating one condition will improve function or that football exposure caused the impairment. The study measured self-reported conditions and self-reported function at one time point, without a control group or follow-up.