PhysioUpdate 11th October 2022

Part way through the Covid-19 pandemic, I started watching The Walking Dead TV series again. I'd lost interest several years previously due to the repetitive nature of most of the episodes. But I suddenly yearned for something familiar, and the story of a virus turning busy streets into ghost towns had obvious parallels with the real world at the time.

As fans will know, the series focuses on the survivors of a mysterious near-apocalyptic event that turned many people into zombies. Entertaining enough, you might think, but by series seven the formula was becoming a little too familiar. Pretty much every episode resulted in a major cast member walking into an abandoned supermarket, house or factory – insert building of choice HERE – that’s been ransacked and is poorly illuminated.

The central hero and a more peripheral cast member – (spoiler alert: soon-to-be-victim) – creep forward together in near silence until one of them accidentally knocks an object over with a crash, at which point a zombie pops up and the less important cast member is consigned to a gory death.

Watching the standard zombie attack scene unfold for the umpteenth time, I was suddenly struck by the parallels to workforce planning for allied health professionals (AHPs).

Former Scottish international rugby union players are two times more likely to develop a neurodegenerative disease than members of the population at large, according to a study published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry today (5 October).

The risk varies by condition – from just over twice as high for dementia to up to 15 times higher for motor neurone disease, the researchers found. They call for the implementation of strategies that will cut the risks of head impact and traumatic brain injury in all sports, including in training sessions.

The study’s lead author is Willie Stewart, a consultant neuropathologist and honorary professor at the University of Glasgow. Professor Stewart is the lead researcher on FIELD (Football’s InfluencE on Lifelong health and Dementia risk), which reported the first data on neurodegenerative disease risk in former professional footballers.

Traumatic brain injury is a major risk factor for neurodegenerative disease and is thought to account for three dementia cases in every 100.