Contact Sports Increase Risk for Lewy Body Disease

A new study led by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine in Massachusetts suggests that contact sport exposure may increase the risk for Lewy body disease, which is associated with Parkinson’s and dementia.

The study, “Lewy Body Pathology and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Associated With Contact Sports,” published online July 25, 2018 in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.

Previous research has shown that traumatic brain injury is associated with increased risk of Parkinson disease and Parkinsonism, and Parkinsonism and Lewy body disease has been known to occur with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

This new study tested whether contact sports and CTE are associated with Lewy body disease. Thor Stein, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues compared deceased contact sports athletes (n = 269) to cohorts from the community (n = 164) and the Boston University Alzheimer disease Center (n = 261).

According to the data, participates with CTE and Lewy body disease were more likely to have β-amyloid deposition, dementia, and Parkinsonism than CTE alone (p < 0.05). In the community-based cohort, years of contact sports play were associated with neocortical Lewy body disease (OR = 1.30 per year, p = 0.012), and in a pooled analysis a threshold of greater than 8 years of play best predicted neocortical Lewy body disease (ROC [Receiver Operating Characteristic] analysis, OR = 6.24, 95% CI = 1.5-25, p =0.011), adjusting for age, sex and APOE ϵ4 allele status.

Stein and colleagues wrote, “Clinically, dementia was significantly associated with neocortical [Lewy body disease], CTE stage and Alzheimer disease; Parkinsonism was associated with [Lewy body disease] pathology but not CTE stage. Contact sports participation may increase risk of developing neocortical [Lewy body disease], and increased Lewy body disease frequency may partially explain extrapyramidal motor symptoms sometimes observed in CTE.”