A HEADS UP for weekend park footballers: football or soccer heading may be causing more long-term damage to your brain than previously thought, according to a new study by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA),
In the study, researchers compared brain MRIs of 352 male and female amateur soccer players, ranging in age from 18 to 53, to brain MRIs of 77 non-collision sport athletes, such as runners.
Soccer players who headed the ball at high levels showed abnormality of the brain’s white matter adjacent to sulci, which are deep grooves in the brain’s surface. Abnormalities in this region of the brain are known to occur in very severe traumatic brain injuries.
The abnormalities were most prominent in the frontal lobe of the brain, an area most susceptible to damage from trauma and frequently impacted during soccer heading. More repetitive head impacts were also associated with poorer verbal learning.
In recent years, research has suggested a link between repeated head impacts and neurodegenerative diseases, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
“The potential effects of repeated head impacts in sport are much more extensive than previously known and affect locations similar to where we’ve seen CTE pathology,” says study senior author Dr Michael L. Lipton, professor of radiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. “This raises concern for delayed adverse effects of head impacts. Our analysis showed that the white matter abnormalities represent a mechanism by which heading leads to worse cognitive performance.”
Of significance was the fact that most of the participants in the study had never sustained a concussion or been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, suggesting repeated head impacts that don’t result in serious injury may still adversely affect the brain.
“The study identifies structural brain abnormalities from repeated head impacts among healthy athletes,” Dr. Lipton said. “The abnormalities occur in the locations most characteristic of CTE, are associated with worse ability to learn a cognitive task and could affect function in the future.”
Soccer has been regarded as less of a CTE risk than the collision codes of football, such as rugby league, rugby union, AFL and grid-iron. But this study shows that the game is not without risk and governing bodies may need to address the CTE issue, potentially through rule changes, in future.
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