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Boxers at greater risk of early onset dementia, study finds

December 31, 2021
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By Mark Kawalya

A study carried out by Cardiff University based on following the lives of 2,500 men over a 35-year period shows that men who boxed as amateurs in early life are at greater risk of developing early dementia. The findings demonstrated that chances of developing Alzheimer’s-like cognitive impairment were two times higher with the condition starting five years earlier than those who had never stepped into the ring.

Peter Flanagan has boxed all his life. He comes from a family of boxers that includes his grandfather and his father, who both started boxing at just 11 years old.

“It’s gone on right from the bare-knuckle days, when the Flanagans were all fighters,” he said.

He started a six-year professional boxing career in the 1980s and faced more than 40 competitors, once fighting four times in 10 days. The former fighter was diagnosed with dementia four years ago, and he explains how, while working as a builder, he suffered bouts of memory loss.

“I’d go to the builders’ yard, I thought I had everything in my head, but then I’d go back and I’d forgotten vital things,” he said. “Then one day I was driving on the motorway and I just didn’t have a clue where I was, where I was going… but within a few minutes it came back.”

His daughter was alarmed at how much his mental health and memory were declining. “At the start, he initially denied it. [He was] very proud… he wanted to carry on being the strong provider for mum,” she said.

However, when the results came back showing he had dementia, his doctor wasn’t sure if his boxing days were responsible for his current state of affairs.

The former boxer is advocating for the rules to be changed to protect other boxers during training, along with limiting head sparing.

The Cardiff University research was published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine and is the first of its kind that looks at the effects of amateur boxing on the brain over an extended period.

Psychological and cognitive tests, scheduled every five years, were carried out on men who had had boxing careers in the past.

Professional boxing has been known to cause chronic traumatic injury, according to lead author and Cardiff University medicine professor Peter Elwood, but there has been no previous substantiated research on the issue in amateur boxing.

The professor said he was surprised by the results, saying: “The men who had boxed had evidence of lower cognitive function, of symptoms, of loss of memory, of confusion, and on their tests on their psychological functions.”

There was also a triple increase in symptoms of Alzheimer’s, with the onset of dementia starting to manifest itself up to eight years and on average, five years earlier when compared with those who had never boxed. 

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