Beyond concussions: football-related hits impact brain’s white matter

Brains of Foot­ball Play­ers Don’t Ful­ly Recov­er Dur­ing Off­sea­son, Study Finds (Edu­ca­tion Week):

“Some foot­ball play­ers’ brains may not ful­ly recov­er from hits endured even after six months of no-con­tact rest dur­ing the off­sea­son… imag­ing scans showed changes in white mat­ter con­sis­tent with mild brain injury in about half the play­ers, despite the fact that none of them had suf­fered a concussion…“At this point we don’t know the impli­ca­tions, but there is a valid con­cern that six months of no-con­tact rest may not be enough for some play­ers. And the real­i­ty of high school, col­lege and pro­fes­sion­al ath­let­ics is that most play­ers don’t actu­al­ly rest dur­ing the off-sea­son. They con­tin­ue to train and push them­selves and pre­pare for the next season.”

Study: Per­sis­tent, Long-term Cere­bral White Mat­ter Changes after Sports-Relat­ed Repet­i­tive Head Impacts (PLOS One)

• Con­clu­sions: A sin­gle foot­ball sea­son of repet­i­tive head impacts (RHIs) with­out clin­i­cal­ly-evi­dent con­cus­sion result­ed in white mat­ter (WM) changes that cor­re­lat­ed with mul­ti­ple hel­met impact mea­sures and per­sist­ed fol­low­ing 6 months of no-con­tact rest. This lack of white mat­ter recov­ery could poten­tial­ly con­tribute to cumu­la­tive WM changes with sub­se­quent RHI exposures.