The PREVENT dementia programme aims to identify risk factors for dementia in midlife. We are now opening up the study to individuals with a history of playing elite or professional football to participate as part of the BrainHOPE project, a collaboration with the University of Glasgow. BrainHOPE is a further development to PREVENT aiming to identify dementia risk factors in former footballers, with a future hope to reduce these risk factors and therefore prevent subsequent consequences.
We have identified former professional footballers as a population with potential higher risk of developing neurodegenerative disease. Under BrainHOPE (Optimising Brain health Outcomes in former Professional and Elite footballers) we will explore dementia risk factors specifically relevant to footballers, we will look at the detailed history of players including the positions played in and experience of head injuries whilst playing. We hope this will develop understanding of risk for dementia in football players to be able to mitigate neurodegenerative risk in this population and with the potential for application to wider contact sports across all population levels.
BrainHOPE is funded by The Football Association (The FA) and FIFA (Football’s international governing body).
BrainHOPE aims to recruit 120 former elite football players (both male and female) aged between 40-59 years at baseline.
The study assessments involved are detailed on our For Participants page. We have study sites available in both Edinburgh at the Western General hospital and West London at the Hammersmith hospital. You would need to be able to travel to either of these locations to participate.
If you would be interested in participating in the study and have a history of playing elite or professional football please sign up in the box below and we will be in touch to discuss the study further.
Football photograph (Top) by user 12019 via pixabay.
Football photograph (Bottom) by user leezathomas099 via pixabay.
