Neurologist Adriano Chio’s research shows that professional footballers in Italy are seven times more likely to develop motor neurone disease — also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS):
Raffaele Guariniello, a magistrate from Turin, enlisted Chio to do an epidemiological survey after his own investigation into a high incidence of cancer and heart problems in Italy’s premier league exposed the presence of an even more sinister scourge among the ranks of the retired players.He discovered that 41 of them had suffered lingering deaths since 1973 from MND, which destroys the body’s motor nerves, eventually resulting in paralysis. Among the victims were Gianluca Signorini, a former captain of Genoa, who died in 2002 at the age of 42, and Adriano Lombardi, a former Como midfielder who died last year, aged 62.
Having survived with the disease for more than 40 years, Stephen Hawking, the astrophysicist, is a rare exception: most patients die within five years of their diagnosis. According to Paul Wicks, a British expert on the condition, doctors cite it as “the one they would not want to get”.
Why Italian footballers should be so vulnerable is baffling the experts.
“Some say it could be due to doping, but if that’s the case then why aren’t other sports similarly affected?” said Paolo Zeppilli, the Italian national team’s doctor. Meanwhile, Guariniello said that inquiries had been made about cycling, basketball and volleyball, but in those sports “not a single case emerged”.
Other European countries, including Britain, are taking note. Spain says it knows of no cases among its footballers and French doctors also were unaware of any link between football and the disease, but note that mysterious “clusters” of sufferers have occurred at different times in different parts of the world.
“In Chicago 11 victims were found in the same building and we have never even begun to understand why,” said Vincent Meininger, one of France’s leading neurologists.
Wicks, a neuro-psychologist who runs PatientsLikeMe, an online support group for people suffering from a number of neurological conditions including MND and Parkinson’s disease, believes that there may be an “athletic gene” that makes people more vulnerable. He said an American study had found that a disproportionate number of sufferers had played sports at university level. “It is probably a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental factors,” he said.