Oh – that paper currently in press, so a 2025 publication

🧪 The same group has a similar paper examining the relationship between contact load and each of contact and non-contact injuries. The rates of both of these types of injury were higher when players had recently been exposed to high contact loads.

While that result probably wouldn’t be a surprise to most people, it is good to have some quantitative information to support load management guidelines.

www.instagram.com/reel/DOMdxi_...

As the Chief Scientist for New Zealand Rugby, I have an obvious conflict of interest.

I recognise this, and the project team has taken significant steps to manage that conflict.

The study funders have played no role in the study design, analysis, or write-up.

Along with Dr Stephanie D’Souza, I am a co-Principal Investigator on the project. We have assembled a team of researchers with expertise across a range of areas.

The study proposal was reviewed by scientists independent of World Rugby.

The data about players was derived from the New Zealand Rugby Register, which was compiled by Clive Akers, a noted record keeper and historian of rugby in New Zealand: natlib.govt.nz/records/3715...

The Kumanu Tāngata project, from which this study comes, was funded by World Rugby and the New Zealand Rugby Foundation, and supported by Statistics New Zealand, who administer the New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure, and New Zealand Rugby.
www.stats.govt.nz/integrated-d...

We found marginally higher rates of neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) in backs than forwards, and backs had increasing rates with longer careers, whereas this effect was not observed in forwards.

…so we will be watching closely to see whether this pattern changes over time.

We didn’t observe higher rates of early onset NDDs among the players to this point, with clear differences becoming apparent after age 70.

However, because NDDs typically emerge in later life, most of those players with the conditions so far are those who played in the 1950s and 1960s…

These results reinforce findings from similar retrospective studies of former professional soccer and NFL players, and the 2022 study of former international rugby players of higher rates of NDDs among former high-level participants in collision sports.

…or motor neuron disease (HR 1.16, 95% CI 0.83 to 1.63). Alzheimer's disease (1.61; 95% CI 1.42–1.83), and other dementias (1.23; 95% CI 1.14–1.33) were clearly higher in the player group.

Unfortunately we didn’t have direct measurements of concussions or numbers of head acceleration events.

…via hospitalisation and death certificate records by the end of the follow up period, which ran from 1988 to 2023.

Players had higher rates of Alzheimer’s and other dementias than males from the general population. There was little apparent effect for Parkinson’s (HR 1.05, 95% CI 0.89 to 1.22)…

The study followed the health outcomes of former first-class New Zealand male players (n=12861) who appeared in matches between 1950 and 2000. The icon diagram shows the percentage of the general population, provincial union/amateur and international/professional players diagnosed with NDDs…

link.springer.com/content/pdf/...

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