Everything You Need to Know About Concussions in Sports
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When discussing concussions in sports, the sport that likely comes to mind first is football. There’s a good reason for that, as statistics show that concussions are common among football players of all ages.
In professional sports, concussions have also been a hot-button topic for the National Football League (NFL). While working in the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office in Pittsburgh in the 2000s, Bennet Omalu, MD, studied the brain of a deceased former NFL player and found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma. The disease, which is associated with memory loss, depression, and dementia, had never been observed in football players before.
It’s important to note, though, that players with a history of depression, moodiness, or substance abuse were probably more likely to donate their brains, leading to selection bias.
The later study also showed that 48 out of 53 people who had played football in college and 3 of 14 who had played football in high school had CTE.
But the relationship between concussions and CTE is complex. It is widely believed that it’s the repeated minor blows to the head that occur regularly in football that pose the greatest risk to players, as opposed to just the violent collisions that can lead to concussions.
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