Brain injury in 43 percent of US ex-football players

MIAMI: Some 43 percent of retired American football players studied show signs of traumatic brain injury, raising new concerns about the long-term effects of hitting and tackling, researchers said on Monday (Tuesday in Manila).

The study involved 40 retired National Football League (NFL) players, who underwent thinking and memory tests as well as brain scans.

“This is one of the largest studies to date in living retired NFL players and objective evidence for traumatic brain injury in these former players,” said study author Francis Conidi of the Florida State University College of Medicine.

“The rate of traumatic brain injury was that found in the general population.”

The players ranged in age from 27 to 56 and played an average of seven years in the league.

Most had been out of the NFL for

They reported an average of eight concussions.

Around a third of the players said they had sustained several hits that were not strong enough to be diagnosed as concussions.

scans called diffusion tensor imaging, were released ahead of a presentation at the American Academy of Neurology’s 68th Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

The advanced MRI scans measured the movement of water molecules in the brain’s white matter -- which controls how the brain functions -- to determine the amount of damage.

“Seventeen players, or 43 percent, had levels of movement 2.5 standard deviations below those of healthy people of the same age, which is considered evidence of traumatic brain injury with a less than one percent error rate,” the study said.

“On the tests of thinking skills, about executive function, 45 percent on learning or memory, 42 percent on attention and concentration.” Concussion is a common injury among NFL players. Longer careers tended to put players light on the possible pathological changat higher risk of TBI, but researchers es consistent with chronic traumatic enestablished no link between higher cephalopathy that may be taking place,” concussion numbers and brain injury. Conidi said.

The latest evidence of widespread better understand the brain condibrain injury among football players, tion known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is associated the NFL, which has long been under with aggression, dementia, depres sion and suicide. concussions in the most popular US

“This research in living players sheds sport.