Clinical trial NCT02833129: The Effects of Playing High School Football on Later Life Cognitive Functioning and Mental Health
Official title: The Effects of Playing High School Football on Later Life Cognitive Functioning and Mental Health: An Observational Study
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Memory Impairment
Executive Dysfunction
Depression
Lead sponsor: University of Pennsylvania
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: University of Wisconsin, Madison
name: Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute
name: Stanford University
First posted: 2016-07-14
Enrollment: 3904
Sex: MALE
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: RETROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Graduates of Wisconsin high schools in 1957. The data comes from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), a long-term study of a random sample of 10,317 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957.

Brief summary: The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of playing high school football on later in life cognitive functioning and mental health. This is an observational study that will use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to compare high school football playing graduates in 1957 with comparable non-high school football playing graduates on cognitive functioning and mental health measures when participants are in their 60s.

Detailed description: The investigators will use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) of graduates from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 to investigate the link between playing high-school football and later life depression and cognitive impairment. The WLS has a number of attractive features that make it well-suited for such a study. First, it records whether study participants participated in high school football and also includes detailed measurements of later-life mental health, psychological well-being, and cognition. Second, it includes a rich set of baseline covariates which the investigators will use to construct matched sets of treated and control individuals, including family background, adolescent characteristics, educational and occupational achievement and aspirations. Third, the WLS is one of the few longitudinal data sets that includes an administrative measure of childhood cognition. In short, the WLS provides a large data set that facilitates comparing the later life mental health and cognitive ability of men who played high school football to those who did not, after carefully controlling for a range of potential confounders. The investigators will compare the primary outcomes of the treated subjects to the primary outcomes of the control subjects, after controlling for baseline covariates via full matching with a propensity score caliper. The primary outcomes are depression (modified CES-D score) and cognitive functioning (average of z-scores for letter fluency and delayed word recall) when participants are age 65. Secondary outcomes that include cognitive scores on various domains, the Spielberger anger index, the Spielberger anxiety index and a hostility index will also be analyzed.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

-- Male.

Exclusion Criteria:

* No yearbook information available to determine football playing status
* Activity participation in yearbook was not recorded under senior photo or in an index.
* Did not played football but played another high contact sport (soccer, hockey, lacrosse or wrestling).

Primary outcomes:
measure: Summary score of psychological distress/depression at age 65
timeFrame: Collected in 2003-2005 when participants were around 65
measure: Composite measure of cognition at age 65
timeFrame: Collected in 2003-2005 when participants were around 65
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Summary score of psychological distress/depression at ages 54 and 72
timeFrame: Collected in 1992 and 2011 when participants were around 54 and 72 respectively
measure: Composite measure of cognition at age 72
timeFrame: Collected in 2011 when participants were around 72
measure: Score on Letter Fluency test at ages 65 and 72
timeFrame: Collected in 2003-2005 and 2011 were around 65 and 72 respectively
measure: Score on Delayed Word Recall test at ages 65 and 72
timeFrame: Collected in 2003-2005 and 2011 when participants were around 65 and 72 respectively
measure: Score on Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Similarities test at ages 54, 65, and 72
timeFrame: Collected in 1992, 2003-2005 and 2011 when participants were around 54, 65 and 72 respectively
measure: Score on Digit Order test at ages 65 and 72
timeFrame: Collected in 2003-2005 and 2011 when participants were around 65 and 72 respectively
measure: Score on McArdle & Woodcock number series test at age 72
timeFrame: Collected in 2011 when participants were around 72
measure: Score on Immediate Word Recall test at ages 65 and 72
timeFrame: Collected in 2003-2005 and 2011 when participants were around 65 and 72 respectively
measure: Hostility index at ages 65 and 72
timeFrame: Collected in 2003-2005 and 2011 when participants were around 65 and 72 respectively
measure: Spielberger anxiety index
timeFrame: Collected in 1992, 2003-2005 and 2011 when participants were around 54, 65 and 72 respectively
measure: Spielberger anger index
timeFrame: Collected in 1992, 2003-2005 and 2011 when participants were around 54, 65 and 72 respectively
measure: Indicator of heavy drinking status at ages 54, 65, and 72
timeFrame: Collected in 1992, 2003-05, and 2011 when participants were around 54, 65, and 72, respectively
Other outcomes:
measure: Occupational Prestige Score
timeFrame: Measured in 1975 for jobs held between 1964 and 1975
measure: Total earnings
timeFrame: 1974
measure: Indicator of regular, vigorous physical activity at age 35
timeFrame: Measured in 2011
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: University of Pennsylvania
name: Sameer Deshpande
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
affiliation: University of Pennsylvania
name: Raiden Hasegawaa
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
affiliation: University of Pennsylvania
name: Dylan S Small, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: