LIONS
NFL Medical News: Neurodegenerative Disease Mortality Study Results
Jimmy Liao, MDLions Wire
July 14, 2026, 9:18 a.m. ET
The risk of football on the brain has hit the news a couple times recently by way of Chris Johnson’s ALS diagnosis and the NFL Neurodegenerative Mortality Study. I read through the full study and here are my thoughts:
NFL Neurodegenerative Mortality Study
ALS falls into the category of neurodegenerative diseases, which was the subject of a recently released study comparing NFL player deaths with non-NFL player deaths. Other diseases in the study’s neurodegenerative classification included dementia, Parkinson’s, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)
The study had the following conclusions:
NFL players exhibited lower all-cause mortality (SMR = 0.70; 95% CI: 0.67–0.74) but higher neurodegenerative mortality (SMR = 3.94; 95% CI: 3.38–4.56)
Neurodegenerative mortality was nearly four times higher in NFL players compared to the general population and remained threefold higher after accounting for competing risks. Together, these findings strengthen the evidence for RHI (repetitive head impacts) exposure-related neurodegenerative mortality in NFL players that cannot be explained by differential survivorship
Here are some of my thoughts on the NFL neurodegenerative disease study:
- The study shows that NFL players outlive the general population which brings into play survivorship bias. There are many in the general population that died before they would have developed neurodegenerative disease. To its credit, the study acknowledges this issue and adjusts the NFL mortality risk from 4x to 3x. It’s not clear from the study how they came up with this adjustment though. (Many media reported the 4x risk number when the more accurate number is 3x.)
The preceding was excerpted from my original story at JimmyLiaoMD.com. For the rest of my thoughts on the study along with Chris Johnson’s ALS diagnosis, visit my story at NFL Neurodegenerative Disease Study & Chris Johnson ALS
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