(Press-News.org) Contact with another player was the most common way boys and girls sustained concussions in a study of U.S. high school soccer players, while heading the ball was the most common soccer-specific activity during which about one-third of boys and one-quarter of girls sustained concussions, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.
Soccer has increased in popularity in the United States over the past three decades. In 1969-1970, there were 2,217 schools that fielded 49,593 boys' soccer players and no girls' soccer players compared to 2013-2014 when 11,718 schools fielded 417,419 boys' soccer players and 11,354 schools fielded 375,564 girls' soccer players.
R. Dawn Comstock, Ph.D., of the Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colo., and colleagues analyzed data collected from 2005-2006 through 2013-2014 in a large nationally representative sample of U.S. high schools where the participants were boys and girls soccer players. The authors looked at trends in concussions over time and identified the mechanisms of concussion as well as the soccer-specific activities during which most concussions occurred.
Overall, the authors found in girls' soccer that 627 concussions were sustained during almost 1.4 million athlete exposures (AEs are defined as one high school athlete participating in one school-sanctioned soccer practice or competition) for a rate of 4.5 concussions per 10,000 AEs. In boys' soccer, there were 442 concussions sustained during almost 1.6 AEs for a rate of 2.78 concussions per 10,000 AEs.
Other findings were:
For boys (68.8 percent) and girls (51.3 percent), player-player contact was the most common way concussions were sustained.
Heading was the soccer-specific activity during which almost one-third of boys' concussions (30.6 percent) and just over one-quarter of girls' concussions (25.3 percent) occurred.
Contact with another player was the most common mechanism of heading-related concussions among boys (78.1 percent) and girls (61.9 percent).
The authors note soccer has been allowed to become a more physical sport over time with more athlete-athlete contact occurring.
"Banning heading is unlikely to eliminate athlete-athlete contact or the resultant injuries. Athlete-athlete contact was the most common mechanism of all concussions among boys (68.8 percent) and girls (51.3 percent) regardless of the soccer-specific activity during which the injury occurred. These trends are consistent with prior literature. Therefore, we postulate that banning heading from soccer will have limited effectiveness as a primary prevention mechanism (i.e. in preventing concussion injuries) unless such a ban is combined with concurrent efforts to reduce athlete-athlete contact throughout the game," the study concludes.
INFORMATION:
(JAMA Pediatr. Published online July 13, 2015. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1062. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: This study was funded in part by grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research funding was also provided by the National Federation of State High School Associations, National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, DonJoy Orthotics and EyeBlack. Please see article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, etc.
Media Advisory: To contact corresponding author R. Dawn Comstock, Ph.D., call Laura Parker at 303-724-1525 or email laura.parker@ucdenver.edu.
To place an electronic embedded link to this study in your story Links will be live at the embargo time: http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?doi=10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1062
While the percentage of institutional review board (IRB) members with an industry relationship has not changed significantly since 2005, the percentage of members who felt other members had not properly disclosed a financial relationship has decreased as did the percentage of IRB members who felt pressure from their institution or department to approve a protocol, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Academic-industry relationships are defined as academics who provide life science companies (for example biotechnology, drug and device companies) ...
A small imaging study suggests cortical cerebral microbleeds in the brain, which are the remnant of red blood cell leakage from small vessels, were associated with reduced brain blood flow in a group of cognitively normal older patients, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology.
Cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) are a common finding in magnetic resonance imaging of elderly patients. Some previous research has suggested an association between CMBs and cognitive deficits, although the mechanism is not clear. Some studies also have suggested CMBs may be related ...
Global air travel contributes around 3.5 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions behind/driving anthropogenic climate change, according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But what impact does a warming planet have on air travel and how might that, in turn, affect the rate of warming itself?
A new study by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and University of Wisconsin Madison found a connection between climate and airline flight times, suggesting a feedback loop could exist between the carbon emissions of airplanes and our changing ...
The remarkable ease and accuracy with which scientists can alter genomes using the CRISPR-Cas9 system has led to promising advances toward improving human health and the environment through genetic engineering. Cas9, a protein found naturally in certain bacteria, functions like a pair of molecular scissors to precisely cut sections of DNA and is extremely effective as a gene-editing tool. It can be directed to a specific gene through the use of a matching guide RNA sequence to perform gene mutations, putting programmable control of gene editing in the hands of scientists.
Even ...
Scientists from the University of Leeds have uncovered the most comprehensive list yet of genes implicated in a group of common inherited diseases.
The research, published in Nature Cell Biology today, means that these disorders, known as ciliopathies, can be diagnosed more quickly and could lead to new treatments for patients.
Ciliopathies are caused by defects in cilia, finger-like projections from cells that act as microscopic "antenna" to detect and respond to chemical changes or fluid flow outside the cell.
Kidney disease, which often leads to kidney failure, ...
UNSW Australia scientists have discovered a link between autism and genetic changes in some segments of DNA that are responsible for switching on genes in the brain.
The finding is the result of a world-first study of the human brain that identified more than 100 of these DNA segments, known as enhancers, which are thought to play a vital role in normal development by controlling gene activity in the brain.
"Our study provides a unique resource of information on gene function in the human brain which could help reveal the basis of autism and related neurological disorders," ...
Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the skin is one of the most frequent cancers in humans affecting more than half million new persons every year in the world. The transformation of a normal cell to a cancer cell is caused by an accumulation of genetic abnormalities in the progeny of single cells. The spectrum of genetic anomalies found in a variety of human cancers have been described. Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) arising from various organs including head-and-neck, lung, esophagus and skin, are induced by carcinogens, such as tobacco and UV exposure. Mouse models of carcinogen-induced ...
Numerous long-term randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been conducted to investigate the long-term, factor concentrate-based treatment of patients with severe haemophilia A or B, despite the rareness of the diseases and the lack of incentives for pharmaceutical companies. These RCTs include three studies comparing prophylactic versus on-demand treatment (i.e. treatment initiated only in the event of bleeding). For patients with haemophilia A, both hints and an indication of an added benefit of prophylactic versus on-demand treatment can be inferred from these studies, ...
July 13, 2015 - For people who use cocaine, stopping or reducing cocaine use is associated with decreased levels of endothelin-1 (ET-1)--a protein that plays a key role in the development of coronary artery disease, reports a study in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
The findings help in understanding the high rate of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) associated with cocaine use, according to the report by Dr. Shenghan Lai and colleagues of Johns ...
Canadian and British researchers have discovered that chromosomes play an active role in animal cell division. This occurs at a precise stage - cytokinesis - when the cell splits into two new daughter cells. It was observed by a team of researchers including Gilles Hickson, an assistant professor at the University of Montreal's Department of Pathology and Cell Biology and researcher at the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre, his assistant Silvana Jananji, in collaboration with Nelio Rodrigues, a PhD student, and Sergey Lekomtsev, a postdoc, working in the group led by Buzz ...
