NFL players age nearly a decade faster than general population, study suggests

Certain age-related illnesses may come at a younger age for professional American football players and cause the healthspans of athletes to be reduced by up to a decade, according to a new study.

The research, published last week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found some players aged nearly a decade faster than the general population and suffered from conditions typically associated with advanced age such as arthritis and high blood pressure as early as their twenties.

Scientists, including those from Harvard Medical School in the US, are calling for further studies to understand the biological mechanisms behind this observed premature aging phenomenon.

“The results should serve as an alarm bell telling clinicians who care for these individuals to pay close attention even to their relatively younger former athlete patients,” study senior author Rachel Grashow said.

“Such heightened vigilance can lead to earlier diagnoses and timelier intervention to prevent or dramatically slow the pace of age-related illness,” Dr Grashow said.

Researchers call for identifying young and middle-aged NFL players who may have these disease conditions.

In the study, data from a survey of nearly 3,000 former National Football League (NFL) players between the ages of 25 and 59 – the largest study cohort of former professional football players to date – was assessed.

Scientists then determined whether a healthcare provider had ever told these athletes that they had conditions like dementia/Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, hypertension or diabetes.

They also used survey data to measure the participants’ health spans or how long these athletes lived without developing any of these diseases, and then compared the survey results with similar questions asked of the general public, accounting for factors like body mass index and race.

While all four conditions were found to increase with age in both the former football players and in the general public, the prevalence of these conditions differed significantly between the two groups.

The former football players were more likely to report in each decade that they’d been diagnosed with dementia/Alzheimer’s disease and arthritis, the study noted.

It found that younger players aged 25-29 reported significantly higher numbers of hypertension and diabetes diagnoses compared to the general population.

The healthspan for each former NFL player age group in the study most closely resembled American men a decade older.

“Professional football players might live as long as men in the general population, but those years could be filled with disability and infirmity,” Dr Grashow said.

Researchers also found that linemen playing the sport, who experience more contact during games than non-linemen, had notably shorter health spans.

This group of players tended to develop age-related illnesses sooner than their other peers.

“These data suggest the emergence of a maladaptive early ageing phenotype among former professional ASF players characterised by premature burden of chronic disease and reduced healthspan,” researchers wrote in the study.