Can being fit raise your risk of motor neurone disease?
Last updated at 13:57pm on 17th April 2007

Peak fitness is normally beneficial to health, but scientists are questioning whether a sporty disposition increases the risk of the degenerative condition motor neurone disease (MND).

A recent example involves three amateur footballers from the UK who developed the disease simultaneously.

Previously, a study of more than 7,000 Italian professional footballers who played between 1970 and 2001 found that they had five times more cases of MND than the rest of the population.

And it is not just football. A study published in the American Academy of Neurology found that people who played university sports had a 1.7 times higher risk of developing the disease than those who did not.

"Many people who get MND are not couch potatoes," says Dr Paul Wicks, a neuropsychologist from King's College, London.

"Genes do play a part in determining how well someone is going to do at sport so this does throw open the question: "Does that same genetic make-up make people more prone to motor neurone disease?""

Dr Wicks found out about the cases of the three amateur British footballers Sam Brown, Graham Hodgetts and George Pearce after being approached by one of the men's wives at a local talk about the disease.

She told him the three men played football for local teams in neurone the Newbury and Basingstoke leagues twice a week from when they were teenagers until they were in their 40s.

The three men were fit until they were diagnosed with a form of the disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in their early 50s.

Sam, 63, is now in a wheelchair and unable to talk while Graham and George died on the same weekend in July 2005.

Dr Wicks and Dr Ammar Al- Chalabi, senior lecturer in neurology at King's College, London, had interviewed the men and have written a paper that has just been published in the medical journal Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

They are calling for the Football Association to assist by giving them access to former professional players' medical history.

"What makes the case of these three men so unusual is that MND neurone disease? is not a common disease," says Dr Al-Chalabi.

"It normally only affects two out of every 10,000 people in the UK. Yet these men played on the same pitch together.

"It could be just a fluke but the odds are quite long on that and my gut reaction is that there is something unusual about them.

"Whether the connection is football we cannot say as they had many things in common and all lived close to each other." Several theories have been put forward to explain why the incidence among footballers and other sportsmen is so high.

"The first is that being sporty means you have a certain type of gene that make you more likely to develop MND," says Dr Al- Chalabi. "The second is related to pesticides on the football pitch or the chemicals used to paint the disease? lines.

"It might be that when a player gashes his leg and careers across a line or bashes into a ball, then he may at the same time get an injection of chemicals and pesticides into his bloodstream which somehow triggers MND.

"The third theory is that injuries that commonly occur on pitch, or the trauma caused by repeatedly heading the ball, is to blame.

"However this is less plausible as motor neurone disease affects all the nerves in the body not just those localised to the head.

"The final theory is that there are factors related to a footballer's lifestyle, such as smoking and drinking." MND is caused by the death of motor nerves, the nerves that connect the brain and muscles to prompt movement.

From the moment a baby is born these nerves start to die off at a rate of a million a day without ill effect. However, in someone with MND the nerves die off much more quickly which leads to the inability to walk, talk or swallow.

The mind, though, is unaffected and sufferers become locked in a useless body. Eventually the motor nerves that help push air in and out of the lungs become affected, which is what often leads to death.

Diagnosis can take up to a year as there is no conclusive test for MND and confirmation of the disease is made by the disease's progress.

The average life expectancy for someone with MND is five years.

There is no cure, although drugs such as riluzole can extend the extended survival rate by about six months.

Motor Neurone Disease Association on 01604 250505, www.lifegoeson.org

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