Blood test could save footy players' brains
A simple blood test could reveal within an hour of a head injury whether a football player should be allowed to return to the sport and how severe the concussion is, Swedish researchers claim.
The finding, published today in the journal JAMA Neurology, comes in the wake of this week's admission by former Australian rugby league player Ian Roberts that he has brain damage.
Roberts, who played for South Sydney, Manly, North Queensland, NSW and Australia during his career, made the discovery after agreeing to participate in a study into the effects of concussion on players in Australia's football codes.
About 40 former players from AFL, rugby league and rugby union have undergone testing at Melbourne's Deakin University with researcher Dr Alan Pearce saying 35 of them have showed signs of brain damage.
The Swedish researchers say their test could prevent long-term brain damage as it can show just an hour after a head injury how severe the concussion is, whether there is a risk of ongoing problems, and when the player can return to the sport.
"In ice hockey and other contact sports, repeated concussions are common, where the brain has not finished healing after the first blow," says Professor Henrik Zetterberg at the University of Gothenburg, who led the study.
"This kind of injury is particularly dangerous, but there have not been any methods for monitoring how a concussion in an athlete heals."
A growing body of scientific evidence, much of it from studies of former American football players and boxers, suggests repeated head knocks such as in contact sports can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain condition that can lead to loss of cognitive function, dementia, aggression and depression.
Zetterberg's team examined all the players in the Swedish Hockey League and found between September and December of the 2012/2013 season alone, 35 of 288 players had had a concussion. In three cases, it was so severe the player was knocked unconscious.
For the study, the players who had a concussion were asked to provide repeated blood samples, initially directly after the concussion and then also during the following days.
The results were compared with the pre-season samples from two full teams, and the scientists found having raised levels of a nerve cell protein called tau in the blood was a marker of concussion.
By measuring tau levels in regular tests, the researchers could say how severe the concussion was just one hour after the injury, and could predict with a high level of certainty which players would have long-term symptoms and needed to rest longer.
Yelverton Tegner, a researcher at Lulea University of Technology and a team doctor for the Swedish national women's football team, who also worked on the study, says the ultimate aim is "to have a working kit that can be used for diagnostics in hospitals, and perhaps also at rink-side or in stadiums", for use immediately after a player is concussed.
"Concussions are a growing international problem," says Zetterberg. "The stakes for the individual athlete are high, and the list of players forced to quit with life-long injury is getting ever longer."
The issue has gained prominence in the US with its National Football League agreeing last August to pay $US765 million to settle a lawsuit brought by thousands of former players, many suffering from dementia and health problems.
The players accused the league of hiding the dangers of brain injury while profiting from the sport's violence.
In Australia the National Rugby League, Australian Football League and the Australian Rugby Union have all implemented new concussion guidelines aimed at protecting the health of players.
Zetterberg says the same test could also be used in general emergency medical care to diagnose brain damage from concussions, regardless of how they happened
Severe concussions can cause a loss of consciousness. Most concussions get better in days or weeks, but some patients can suffer symptoms more than a year after injury.