Love of the Game

Thanks to the wonderful generosity of an important philanthropist with interests in the UK and US, we have been given an amazing founding gift for this project.

Vascular dementia happens when there’s a problem with the blood supply to an area of your brain, and it can occur following a stroke.

The cells in the affected area of your brain don’t get enough oxygen or nutrients and start to die. This leads to symptoms such as concentration problems and personality changes.

Former football and rugby players with dementia six times more likely to have disease linked to repetitive head trauma.

Neuropathologists are becoming increasingly aware of patients with a mixture of dementia pathologies in the wider population, but this typically only occurs in very elderly people. Former rugby and football players assessed in a recent study were relatively young - five first showed symptoms in their fifties and five in their sixties - and so raises the possibility that exposure to head trauma does not just lead to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy but to a complex mixture of dementias.

A private fund in the UK will oversee research involving supporters from the rugby world who want to protect their sport, by protecting their people.