Brain scans of former American football players show signs of white matter injury, according to research.
It has been difficult to identify brain damage before death. The latest work suggests that markers of injury could be detected using specialized scans, allowing doctors to study and potentially diagnose such damage more quickly.
The results of the study show that white matter may be able to capture long-term harm to the brain in people who have a history of repetitive head impacts.
As sporting bodies continue to grapple with the question of how to improve safety, evidence has emerged linking repetitive impacts, such as during tackles in rugby or heading the ball in football, to cognitive problems such as dementia.
Alosco said that more work would be needed before the scans could be used to diagnose individuals, but that it would provide an immediate research tool to help illuminate the link between sports such as American football, boxing and rugby, and conditions such as dementia.
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Evidence about head trauma in sport and dementia.
There is evidence to consider between head trauma in sport and dementia.
75 people who were exposed to repetitive head impacts and had undergone scans as part of medical assessments were involved in the study. There were 67 American football players, eight other athletes in sports such as football and boxing, and military veterans. Each of the American football players who played for an average of 12 years played professionally or semi-professionally.
All of them donated their brains to be used for research. The medical records were looked at by researchers. The average age at death was 67 for participants who had scans of their brains.
A majority of the participants had dementia before they died, based on a discussion with their loved ones. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease associated with repetitive head impacts, can progress to dementia if it is not treated.
The study found that the white matter hyperintensities were correlated with evidence of small vessel disease and other indicators of brain damage in postmortem investigations.
The volume of white matter hyperintensities on scans correlated with impairment scores on performing daily tasks, and were associated with more years of playing football.
There was a link between the brain and the accumulation of a brain disease called Alzheimer's.
White matter tracts, long fibres that connect different brain regions, could be particularly vulnerable to injury during high impact sports, according to Alosco.
The study used scans taken during medical exams of people who were already suffering from dementia, rather than tracking athletes through time to see if the scans could predict future cognitive damage.
Michael Grey, a neuroscientist at the University of East Anglia, who is co-leading a trial on concussion in sport, said it would not be feasible to use this kind of scans widely as a diagnostic tool, but that being able to study athletes during their lifetimes could help understanding of what He said that it was an important advance. Pathology alone is not going to solve this issue.
