Objective: Since the observation of several deaths from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) among Italian professional soccer players, an association between ALS and soccer has been postulated. The objective of the study is to investigate the association between professional soccer and the risk of ALS in a large cohort of former professional soccer players with prolonged follow-up.Methods: All professional soccer players practicing in the period 1959-2000 were identified through the archives of an Italian soccer cards publisher. For each player, date and place of birth, playing role and team history were recorded. Each player was followed since 15 years of age.Incident ALS cases were all soccer players first diagnosed during the period 1959-2018. The expected incidence rate was the number of ALS cases/100,000 person-years expected in the cohort. SIR was the ratio between observed and expected incidence rate.Results: 34 ALS cases were detected. The number of expected cases was 17.8. The SIR was 1.91 (95% CI 1.32-2.67) in the entire sample and 4.66 (95% CI 2.66-7.57) in subjects aged less than 45 years. The mean age at diagnosis was 45.0 years. Compared to the mean age of onset of ALS in the general population (65.2 years), the disease in former soccer players occurred 20.2 years earlier.Conclusions: Professional soccer players are at higher risk of developing ALS than the general population. Soccer players with ALS develop the disease at a younger than expected age.
Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. During their holidays, tourists produce direct and indirect effects on local residents, which can either be positive or negative. In this paper we investigate how residents of Rimini, a popular Italian seaside resort hosting more than ten million national and foreign overnight stays every year, internalise such effects. We use a stated preference approach and, in particular, a discrete choice modelling technique; within this framework, we are able to test some conjectures about residents' welfare, by measuring their willingness to pay for alternative scenarios regarding the use of the territory. Tourist policies and public investments in the destination affect residents' welfare, and our results might suggest areas of potential synergies and trade-off, leading to important policy implications.
Terms of use:
Documents in
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.