Multimodal Imaging of Retired Professional Contact Sport Athletes Does Not Provide Evidence of Structural and Functional Brain Damage.
Robert Zivadinov, Paul Polak, Ferdinand Schweser and 7 others
PMID 30080799WHAT IT FOUND
No significant differences were found on brain MRI between 21 retired contact sport athletes and 21 non-contact sport controls.
The study was too small to detect differences, and it measured brain scans.
Key findings
01No significant differences were found between contact sport athletes and non-contact controls in white matter signal abnormalities or brain volume.
02No significant differences were found in diffusion MRI outcomes.
03Non-contact controls had more participants with at least one cerebral microbleed than contact athletes, but the difference was not significant.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study included only 21 contact sport athletes and 21 non-contact sport controls in the MRI portion, and the authors state this was too small to detect differences in the MRI measures examined. The study did not examine some brain regions in more detail beyond a whole-brain tract analysis, such as the corpus callosum, brainstem, or front-orbital structures. The reported outcomes were MRI measures, not symptoms or function.
Declared interests
The article is listed as supported by NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research support. Robert Zivadinov received personal compensation from EMD Serono, Novartis, Celgene, Genentech, Claret Medical and Sanofi-Genzyme for speaking and consultant fees, and financial support for research activities from Biogen Idec, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Sanofi-Genzyme, Novartis, Claret Medical and Coherus-Intekrin. Michael G. Dwyer received personal compensation from Claret Medical for speaking and consultant fees and financial support for research activities from Novartis. Paul Polak, Ferdinand Schweser, Niels Bergsland, John Baker, Andrea Hinds, John Leddy, Barry Willer and Deepa P. Ramasamy had nothing to disclose.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that contact sport causes no brain damage. The authors state the sample was too small to detect differences, and the study did not examine some brain regions in more detail.