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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Soccer Head

Soccer Players Show Signs of Brain Damage
Repetitive hits on the head that are below the threshold for causing a concussion may still result in changes in the brain’s white matter, a small study of soccer players suggested.full story


White Matter Integrity in the Brains of Professional Soccer Players Without a Symptomatic Concussion

Inga K. Koerte, MD; Birgit Ertl-Wagner, MD; Maximilian Reiser, MD; Ross Zafonte, DO; Martha E. Shenton, PhD
JAMA. 2012;308(18):1859-1861. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.13735.
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To the Editor: Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, with more than 250 million active players.It is the only sport in which the unprotected head is a primary point of contact when heading the ball. In other contact sports, the deleterious long-term effects of repetitive traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as impaired white matter integrity,are well recognized.3However, whether frequent subconcussive blows to the head lead to TBI remains controversial,although evidence suggests impaired neuropsychological function in soccer players.We evaluated concussion-naive soccer players using high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which is highly sensitive for detecting alterations in white matter architecture./.../

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