Repeated Brain Concussion Can Lead To Disability

Repeated Brain Concussion Can Lead To Disability.
After taking a distressingly hit to the perceptiveness during a football game, an Indiana high school student suffered severe headaches for the next three days. Following a crescendo CT scan that was normal, his doctor told him to respite to go back on the field until he felt better. But the boy returned to practice, where he suffered a devastating brains injury called second impact syndrome. More than six years later, Cody Lehe, now 23, is mostly wheelchair-bound and struggles with diminished mad capacity.

Yet he's fortunate to be alive: Second modify syndrome is fatal in about 85 percent of cases. "It's a unique syndrome of sense injury that appears in high school and younger athletes when they have a mild concussion, and then have a bat head impact before they're over the symptoms of their first impact. This leads to massive knowledge swelling almost immediately," said Dr Michael Turner, a neurosurgeon at Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, and co-author of a rejuvenated report on Cody's case, published Jan. 1 in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics.

The casing study illustrates why it's so notable to prevent a second impact and give a young brain the chance to rest and recover, another wizard said. "Second impact syndrome is a very rare phenomenon. It's estimated to occur about five times a year in the country," said Kenneth Podell, a neuropsychologist and co-director of the Methodist Concussion Center in Houston.

So "What makes this deliberate over unique: They're the initially ones to in actuality have a CT scan after the first hit. What they were able to show is that the first CT scan was read as normal," said Podell, who also is a rig consultant for the Houston Texans, of the NFL. "After the first concussion there was no clue of any significant injury.

Risk Factors For Alzheimer's Disease

Risk Factors For Alzheimer's Disease.
Older adults with homage problems and a narration of concussion have more buildup of Alzheimer's disease-associated plaques in the brain than those who also had concussions but don't have respect problems, according to a new study. "What we think it suggests is, head trauma is associated with Alzheimer's-type dementia - it's a endanger factor," said study researcher Michelle Mielke, an friend professor of epidemiology and neurology at Mayo Clinic Rochester. But it doesn't degenerate someone with head trauma is automatically going to develop Alzheimer's. Her turn over is published online Dec 26, 2013 and in the Jan 7, 2014 print version of the journal Neurology.

Previous studies looking at whether head trauma is a risk factor for Alzheimer's have come up with conflicting results. And Mielke stressed that she has found only a relate or association, not a cause-and-effect relationship. In the study, Mielke and her band evaluated 448 residents of Olmsted County, Minn, who had no signs of tribute problems.

They also evaluated another 141 residents with memory and thinking problems known as mild cognitive impairment. More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association. Plaques are deposits of a protein scrap known as beta-amyloid that can erect up in between the brain's nerve cells. While most folk develop some with age, those who develop Alzheimer's generally get many more, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

They also minister to to get them in a predictable pattern, starting in brain areas crucial for memory. In the Mayo study, all participants were venerable 70 or older. The participants reported if they ever had a brain injury that implicated loss of consciousness or memory. Of the 448 without any memory problems, 17 percent had reported a cognition injury. Of the 141 with memory problems, 18 percent did.

Athletes Often Suffer A Concussion

Athletes Often Suffer A Concussion.
Altitude may stir an athlete's endanger of concussion, according to a new study believed to be the first to examine this association. High school athletes who leeway at higher altitudes suffer fewer concussions than those closer to sea level, researchers found in Dec, 2013. One viable reason is that being at a higher altitude causes changes that frame the brain fit more tightly in the skull, so it can't move around as much when a player suffers a head blow. The investigators analyzed concussion statistics from athletes playing a distance of sports at 497 US exorbitant schools with altitudes ranging from 7 feet to more than 6900 feet above flood level.

The average altitude was 600 feet. They also examined football separately, since it has the highest concussion charge of US high school sports. At altitudes of 600 feet and above, concussion rates in all considerable school sports were 31 percent lower, and were 30 percent cut for football players, according to the findings recently published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine.

Football And Short-Term Brain Damage

Football And Short-Term Brain Damage.
Children who motion football in halfway point school don't appear to have any noticeable short-term brain damage from repeated hits to the head, renewed research suggests. However, one doctor with expertise in pediatric brain injuries expressed some concerns about the study, saying its shallow size made it hard to draw definitive conclusions. The learn included 22 children, ages 11 to 13, who played a season of football. The mature comprised 27 practices and nine games. During that time, more than 6000 "head impacts" were recorded.

They were alike in force and location to those experienced by high school and college players, but happened less often, the researchers found. "The unmixed difference between head impacts savvy by middle school and high school football players is the number of impacts, not the strength of the impacts," said lead researcher Thayne Munce, associate director of the Sanford Sports Science Institute in Sioux Falls, SD. A occasion of football did not seem to clinically weaken the brain function of middle school football players, even among those who got hit in the head harder and more often.

And "These findings are encouraging for minor football players and their parents, though the long-term effects of whippersnapper football participation on brain health are still unknown. The report was published online recently in the history Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. For the study, players wore sensors in their helmets that intentional the frequency of hits to the head, their location and force.