Share

Years of boxing may cause brain damage

accreditation

A new study suggests there is a point at which lasting brain damage can set in for boxers.

But, once they cross that threshold, years might pass before sports injury symptoms show.

"The brain can tolerate or absorb a certain amount of trauma and repair itself," explained study author Dr Charles Bernick. The findings raise the question of whether – and when – fighters should be medically screened, so changes could be caught earlier and available treatment offered, he said.

It's already well documented that "the more exposure you have to head trauma, the higher your risk of developing long-term complications. Primarily, this condition is chronic traumatic encephalopathy," said Bernick, associate director of the Lou Ruvo Centre for Brain Health at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Also known as Boxer's Syndrome, chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a degenerative brain disease that causes the same kinds of thinking difficulties and personality changes seen with Alzheimer's disease.

More fights don’t make a difference

As part of an ongoing study on brain health, the researchers divided 109 licensed boxers and mixed martial artists into three groups: those who had fought for less than six years, six to 12 years or more than 12 years. Their average age was about 29.

Participants underwent MRI scans to measure their brain volume and tests of their thinking and memory.

"In those that fought less than six years, we didn't find any changes," Bernick said. For that group, he said, "The more you fought didn't seem to make any differences in the size of brain structure or their performance on some of the tests like reaction time."

But for the other two groups of boxers and combat athletes, "the greater number of fights, the sizes of certain volumes of the brain was decreasing," he said. "But, it was only in those that fought more than 12 years that we could detect the changes in performance in reaction time and processing speed."

Boxing more dangerous than football

Women made up about 10% of the fighters in the study, too small a number to make any comparisons for now, Bernick said.

The study will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in New Orleans, held from April 21 to 28.

"This is a cross-sectional study – just one point in time in all these fighters' lives," Bernick said. "It needs to be substantiated and confirmed, but it's biologically plausible and it makes sense, and we're going to be following up on that."

With repetitive head trauma, Dr Howard Derman, medical director at the Methodist Concussion Center in Houston, said "boxing is clearly more dangerous than football, because the number of the hits to the head is greater," and no headgear is used at the professional level.

"The initial presentations may begin with things like deterioration in attention, concentration, memory, disorientation, confusion and then they get much bigger issues with dementia, and then it even progresses to Parkinsonian features," Derman said. Parkinsonian features include rigidity and tremor.

Young athletes also show trauma

Derman isn't convinced that a time lag always exists between early head injuries from sports and measurable brain changes.

"Most of us believe that there is the period of quiescence, which is why you're seeing a lot of these [retired] football players in their 40s and 50s developing an issue," Derman said. "The disconcerting feature is that there are multiple cases of athletes who are very young" showing signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy on autopsy, for instance after dying in vehicle accidents, he added.

"Clearly, everyone who plays football or is a boxer does not develop a dementia-like picture. It is fortunately a small minority of the athletes that do," said Derman, adding that genetic predisposition likely plays a role.

Study author Bernick said that if further research confirms the findings, "it may give regulatory agencies, boxing athletic commissions, guidelines on how to protect their athletes, when to perhaps require evaluation."


Professional athletes ignore problem

But that would be a hard sell, in Derman's view.

"That probably won't happen because the professional athletes – they don't want to know they have a problem, as funny as that seems. That's part of the issue," Derman said.

"The big thing we can do is some kind of baseline testing on all athletes, so we can compare where they are [after a head injury] with where they were," he said. "I think X-ray and MRI scans are a larger leap, and players' associations of all the leagues would really [be opposed]."

Data and conclusions presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

(Lisa Esposito, HealthDay News, April 2012) 

Read more:

Doctors oppose boxing

Traumatic Brain Injury

We live in a world where facts and fiction get blurred
Who we choose to trust can have a profound impact on our lives. Join thousands of devoted South Africans who look to News24 to bring them news they can trust every day. As we celebrate 25 years, become a News24 subscriber as we strive to keep you informed, inspired and empowered.
Join News24 today
heading
description
username
Show Comments ()
Editorial feedback and complaints

Contact the public editor with feedback for our journalists, complaints, queries or suggestions about articles on News24.

LEARN MORE