Youth football and concussions: some good news?

Concussions and football have come up before, and the news so far has been discouraging. We want kids to stay active, and football is one of the most popular boys’ sports out there. But we know that some prominent professional athletes have had serious, cumulative brain damage from years of football – sometimes brain damage that has destroyed their lives. What about high school football, or football starting even earlier? Are we encouraging a sport that’s a cause of serious, lifelong disability? A recent publication gives at least some reassurance. From the August 2017 issue of JAMA Neurology comes a study titled “Association of Playing High School Football with Cognition and Mental Health Later in Life.” It’s not a perfect, definitive study, but it’s got some solid long-term data. Researchers have been studying a cohort of about 10,000 Wisconsin high school graduates – students who graduated in 1957, so they’re now about 78 years old. Of those, about 2,700 have complete data, including formal testing of their mental condition at age 65 and 72. Tests were done on intelligence and brain functioning using several standard assessments, as well as testing for things like depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. They also went through the high school yearbooks to figure out which of these students played football (it turned out to be about 30 percent. Football was, and still is, big in Wisconsin.) Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to r...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Conditions Neurology Pediatrics Source Type: blogs