University of Exeter conducts study on concussions in sport

Amateur athletes who suffer a concussion while playing sports may not experience the long-term cognitive decline that often accompanies head injuries, according to a study.

The cognitive performance of these athletes may even be better in some areas than that of athletes who have never suffered a concussion.

The researchers suspect that this finding indicates a possible protective effect of participation in sports.

More than 15,000 people aged between 50 and 90 took part in the sports-related concussion study, conducted by scientists from the University of Exeter, UNSW Sydney, the University of Oxford and Harvard University.

Professor Anne Corbett of the University of Exeter said: “We are seeing a very different profile of brain health effects in people who suffer concussion as a result of sport compared to people whose concussion is not related to sport.”

“Concussions that occur during sports do not lead to brain health problems, whereas other types of concussions do, especially if the person suffers multiple concussions.

“In fact, people who exercise appear to have better brain health, regardless of whether or not they sustained a concussion while exercising.”

Lead author Dr Matt Lennon from UNSW Sydney said: “Our results suggest that exercise, even if the person suffers a concussion, can have a positive impact on long-term cognitive abilities.

“While it may be that those who exercised had access to better education and more resources, we took these factors into account in the analysis, so they do not explain the result.

“We hypothesize that exercise can have physical, social and long-term behavioral effects that can lead to people living healthier lives as they age.”

The researchers collected lifetime concussion histories from 15,214 participants, of whom 6,227 (39.5%) reported at least one concussion and 510 (3.2%) reported at least one moderate to severe concussion.

On average, participants reported that their last head injury occurred 29 years before the study and their first head injury occurred 39 years before.

The researchers then compared the cognitive functions of people with multiple sports-related concussions with those of people with non-sports-related concussions, such as falls, car accidents, and assaults.

The group with the sports-related concussion showed 4.5% better working memory than the group without sports-related concussion and 7.9% better cognitive ability than the group without concussions.

Individuals with a sports-related concussion also showed better verbal reasoning and attention than individuals without a sports-related concussion.

Professor Vanessa Raymont of the University of Oxford said: “This study suggests that sport may have long-term benefits that may outweigh the negative effects of concussion. This could have important implications for policy decisions regarding participation in contact sports.”

“It may also be that non-sports-related head injuries result in greater brain damage than sports-related concussions.”

However, the researchers point out that the study had some limitations.

“The retrospective design of the study, in which older participants often recalled details of events that occurred more than three decades ago, may have influenced the reporting of head injuries, even though we used a well-validated head injury screening tool,” added Prof. Raymont.

– The study “Sports-related concussion not associated with long-term cognitive or behavioral deficits” was published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.