Head Injuries May Hike Risk of Parkinson’s Disease presents some bad news for my kickboxing friends:
People who sustain substantial head injuries may face an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease years later, new study findings suggest.Overall, those who had experienced head trauma were about four times more likely to develop the neurological disease than those who never had such injuries, results showed.
[...]
However, those who had experienced head trauma involving a loss of consciousness, skull fracture, prolonged memory loss or more severe complications were 11 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than those who had never sustained head trauma.
[...]
An average person’s lifetime risk of developing Parkinson’s is 1.7 percent, so those with the more severe head trauma may face almost a 20 percent risk, Bower explained.
[...]
One of the reasons researchers have suspected a link is that boxers are known to be at risk for a condition called dementia pugilistica that has some Parkinson’s-like symptoms.