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.¹ 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,² are well recognized.³However, whether frequent subconcussive blows to the head lead to TBI remains controversial,^4 - 5 although evidence suggests impaired neuropsychological function in soccer players.⁵ We evaluated concussion-naive soccer players using high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which is highly sensitive for detecting alterations in white matter architecture./.../