Retired high-performance contact sports athletes are being asked to participate in a ground-breaking research study investigating the links between sport-related brain injury and dementia risk in later life.
The RESOLVE study, led by researchers in Trinity College Dublin, will also explore how to reduce dementia risk through lifestyle changes, such as managing blood pressure and implementing exercise programmes.
The research team is looking to recruit 360 contact-sports athletes from the disciplines of rugby, soccer and Gaelic games, who are retired from high level competition and aged between 40-59.
It is the first time this type of research has been conducted at such a large scale in Ireland, and it will also be one of the largest international longitudinal studies of the brain health of mid-life contact-sports athletes.
“Scientists already know that experiencing a sport-related brain injury (TBI) during your lifetime increases the risk of dementia in later life by around 3-15%. However, we don’t fully understand how sport-related TBI impacts cognition and brain health in mid-life, prior to the development of dementia symptoms,” explained Principal Investigator of the study Lorina Naci, Professor, School of Psychology, and the Global Brain Health Institute.
The research team will undertake detailed clinical, cognitive, physical and lifestyle assessments of the participants at the initial visit, and again after two years. The results will be compared to those of 700 control individuals. This will identify who is at greatest risk of TBI-related dementia, and how to intervene early to reduce dementia risk in athletes and the wider population.
“We aim to find new ways to measure TBI-related dementia risk, and to identify changes in lifestyle that could reduce this risk in contact sports athletes and the wider population, some 20-30 years before symptoms, such as memory loss and confusion, develop,” Fiona Wilson, Professor in Physiotherapy, School of Medicine, and Co-Principal Investigator on the study, added.