Researchers have found that footballers who head the ball often have brain abnormalities similar to those of people with concussion (mild traumatic brain injury). The study was published online in the journal Radiology.
The researchers studied players of the world's most popular sport using advanced MRI. Heading is one of football's best-known moves, done by hundreds of millions of people of all ages.
On average, players head the ball six to 12 times a match, and the ball can travel at up to 75 kilometres an hour. A single header is unlikely to injure the brain, but repeated heading can do harm, and the damage may be clinically important.
The study involved 37 amateur players with an average age of 31, who had played football since childhood, for an average of 22 years each, and had played at least ten months in the past year. Their brains were scanned with an advanced MRI technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and each took memory and language tests.
DTI tracks the movement of water molecules along nerve fibres in the brain's white matter. Normally the movement is orderly; it becomes disordered when the brain is damaged.
Players who headed the ball often (885 to 1,550 times a year) had nerve fibre abnormalities like those seen in concussion, and those who headed it more than 1,800 times a year had poorer memory.
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