Neurodegenerative Mortality Elevated for NFL Athletes

MONDAY, July 13, 2026 (HealthDay News) — National Football League (NFL) athletes have higher neurodegenerative mortality than the general population, according to a study published online July 8 in eClinicalMedicine.

Charlotte B. Luster, from the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, and colleagues conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study involving all current and former NFL athletes who debuted between 1960 and 2019 to examine the relationship between repetitive head injury exposure and neurodegenerative mortality. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were calculated from National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health data compared to a general population standardized for age, sex, and calendar year.

Overall, 19,824 athletes had a cumulative 518,833 person-years of follow-up, with 1,994 decedents. The researchers found that all-cause mortality was lower for NFL players (SMR, 0.70), but neurodegenerative mortality was higher (SMR, 3.94), including mortality from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, all-cause dementia, and Parkinson disease (SMRs, 4.55, 3.80, and 3.88, respectively). The expected neurodegenerative disease SMR would be inflated by a factor of 1.30 by competing risks alone, yielding a residual SMR of 3.04.

“This is the clearest population-level evidence we have ever had that NFL players are dying due to neurodegenerative disease at real and measurably higher rates,” co-senior author Daniel Daneshvar, M.D., Ph.D., also from the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, said in a statement. “This study demonstrates that, when looking at athletes who have played in an NFL game, including nearly 20,000 players, across every official cause of death, the result is the same: NFL players are dying of dementia and Parkinson”s disease three to four times more often than they should.”

Several authors disclosed ties to sports and other industries.

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