Concussion

CTE has been diagnosed in 31 former rugby league players whose brains were examined after death, including players in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease, can only be diagnosed after death. Its sole cause is repetitive impacts to the head and body. Those diagnosed included former rugby league player [...]

At least a quarter of former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE, a study estimates. Researchers calculated a conservative CTE prevalence of 24.5 per cent among 878 former NFL players who died during the period. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can currently only be definitively diagnosed after death by examining brain tissue. [...]

A postbiotic given before traumatic brain injury reduced brain damage and improved cognitive performance in mice, a study suggests. Postbiotics are substances produced when gut bacteria digest food. The findings raise the possibility that they could be investigated as a preventive treatment for people at risk of head trauma. The research focused on indole-3-propionic acid, [...]

Former Wales internationals have backed a new study into how repeated head impacts affect women’s rugby players. Cardiff University’s medical engineering team aims to create the first head impact assessment protocol designed specifically for female athletes. The study followed 30 players from the university’s women’s rugby team using specialised mouthguards, cognitive tests and MRI scans. [...]

US Army medics in Europe are trialling a handheld TBI tool that could help identify traumatic brain injuries in as little as 15 minutes. The US Army said the i-STAT Alinity device, made by Abbott Laboratories, is being tested to help medics make faster decisions in battlefield settings. Military officials said the tool could give [...]

Nobby Stiles’ son has warned of a brain injury “epidemic” among footballers who head the ball, especially women. John Stiles spoke after an inquest on Wednesday into the death of his father, the England 1966 World Cup winner and former Manchester United midfielder, heard that thousands of headers had caused his chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or [...]

Tinnitus is common among former NFL players, particularly those with a history of concussion symptoms, new research suggests. The condition was also associated with worse mental health among affected former players.   The study was led by Niki Konstantinides, a researcher in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of [...]

Heading a football just once may temporarily release brain injury markers into the blood, a study of amateur male players suggests. The research found greater changes in certain blood markers associated with neural damage the harder and more often players headed the ball. For two of the six proteins tracked, levels rose higher the more [...]

Claude Lemieux’s brain is being donated to Boston University’s CTE research centre, his family said in a statement. The former ice hockey player died by suicide at the age of 60 on Thursday, according to authorities, after serving as the Montreal Canadiens’ torchbearer before a playoff game earlier that week. He played nearly 1,500 NHL [...]

Moderate screen time after concussion was linked to greater improvement in psychological symptoms in adolescents than either low or high use, a study suggests. The research followed adolescents aged 12 to 17.9 years who had sustained a concussion, a mild brain injury usually caused by a blow to the head, and were assessed within 10 [...]