Collisions in Contact Sports
Written by Melissa Zenteno
Edited by Khushi Shah
April 5, 2024
Edited by Khushi Shah
April 5, 2024
Health and Wellness
Contact sports are sports that involve contact such as hockey, football, boxing, lacrosse, martial arts. These are sports that children participate in early on, or throughout their lifetime. Basically a majority of people have been involved in contact sports at least once in their life. Playing sports can be beneficial for an individual’s wellbeing, but there are always possibilities for negative effects.
Contact sports have been associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. In Jason W. Adams, et al. article, Lewy Body Pathology and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Associated with Contact Sports the researchers were trying to prove that participants with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) had unusual distributions of lewy body disease (LBD). The studies found that “repetitive head impacts could lead to neocortical LBD and a combination of CTE and LBD could cause severe clinical deterioration.”
Repetitive head impacts (RHI) is related to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is a neurodegenerative disorder that might be a result of constant head trauma. Lewy Body disease is when there are “abnormal amounts of the alpha-synuclein protein.” The overproduction of the alpha-synuclein protein causes changes in the brain that lead to thinking, movement, behavior, and mood problems. T
he study was conducted by using 694 donated brains. 269 participant brains had a history of contact sports, 261 had Alzheimer’s disease, and 164 participants were the control. Neurologists and neuropsychologists collected the data using medical and study records. The researchers used a chart to list the participant characteristics such as age of death, years of exposure. The other side of the charts had diagnoses such as CTE and CTE-LBD. This allowed researchers to cluster participants, what characteristics lead to certain impairments.
The results revealed that the more RHI exposure an individual’s brain had, the chances of developing LBD increased. There was a “stronger association between the years spent playing contact sports and the probability of having Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.” The participants with CTE did not have an unusual distribution of LBD. The amount of time with RHI was directly associated with the likelihood of having LBD in general. LBD is associated with parkinsonism and dementia. “CTE and LBD cause severe clinical deterioration in motor skills but not necessarily dementia.” As a result, a combination of CTE and LBD increases the likelihood of dying earlier.
References:
Jason W Adams, Victor E Alvarez, Jesse Mez, Bertrand R Huber, Yorghos Tripodis, Weiming Xia, Gaoyuan Meng, Caroline A Kubilus, Kerry Cormier, Patrick T Kiernan, Daniel H Daneshvar, Alicia S Chua, Sarah Svirsky, Raymond Nicks, Bobak Abdolmohammadi, Laney Evers, Todd M Solomon, Jonathan D Cherry, Nurgul Aytan, Ian Mahar, Sherral Devine, Sanford Auerbach, Michael L Alosco, Christopher J Nowinski, Neil W Kowall, Lee E Goldstein, Brigid Dwyer, Douglas I Katz, Robert C Cantu, Robert A Stern, Rhoda Au, Ann C McKee, Thor D Stein, Lewy Body Pathology and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Associated With Contact Sports, Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology, Volume 77, Issue 9, September 2018, Pages 757–768, https://doi.org/10.1093/jnen/nly065
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