TACKLING ISSUE HEAD ON
Hits may impact brain development
Former NFL players who started playing tackle football prior to age 12 were more likely to have their brain structure altered from repeated blows to the head than those who took up the sport later in life, according to a groundbreaking study by local researchers.
“It makes sense that children whose brains are rapidly developing should not be hitting their heads over and over again,” said Dr. Robert Stern, a lead researcher in the study with Boston University’s School of Medicine.
“This study supports that idea and suggests that there may be later-life consequences associated with experiencing these repeated hits during childhood,” Stern said.
He added peewee football players may “experience hundreds of these repetitive head impacts over the course of just one season. And we’re just now starting to understand whether those very frequent hits have any shortterm or long-term consequences.”
The Herald reported yesterday Bay State schools reported nearly 14,000 sports-related head injuries in the 2013-2014 academic year, according to state public health data. The 13,936 cases of head injuries in middle and high schools statewide represent a spike of nearly 25 percent from the previous school year. But 77 more schools — 557 total — filed head injury reports during the 2013-14 year compared with the previous year.
Forty retired NFL players between the ages of 40 and 65 who played at least two years professionally took part in the study that took about three years, Stern said.
The former athletes underwent advanced MRI scans called diffusor tensor imaging, or DTI. Stern explained the process analyzes the white matter tracts of the brain, which he called the “superhighways” that relay commands and information between brain cells.
Of the 40 participants, half began playing football prior to age 12 and they were “more likely to have alterations to the white matter tracts of the corpus callosum, which is the largest structure of the brain that connects the two cerebral hemispheres,” Stern said.
Prior to age 12, the brain is developing rapidly and could be more susceptible to injuries, Stern said.
The number of concussions suffered by players who began playing prior to age 12 and those who waited to hit the gridiron were similar, researchers said.
The results of the study were published online in the Journal of Neurotrauma. The former athletes’ brains were scanned at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Stern said.
That study is part of a larger one funded by the National Institutes of Health focused on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, better known as CTE, a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes who have suffered repeated head trauma.
There is no way to diagnosis the disease in living people, Stern said.
“I am hopeful that within the next five years we will have ways of diagnosing CTE during life somewhat accurately,” Stern said, “and have a much better understanding of the genetic and head impact exposure risk factors for the disease.”