Interesting article about concussion in rugby

[nelly sham]

I saw some of the clips from the State of Origin that are going around. The red card in particular was fucking ridiculous.

Fans typically going for the "games gone soft" shite

 

[nelly sham]

Saunderson up at Ulster retired today.
He's 22!

 

[How bad boy]

Norm Hewitt dead at 55 from MND.

Any professional rugby player who isn't concerned about this doesn't understand the problem.

I'd be surprised if it isn't as a result of damage to the brain stem, cranial nerves and other parts of the autonomic nervous system. There's a theory that the brain damage from concussion is from the brain's moorings tearing, resulting in a breach of the blood/brain barrier, resulting in the blood system developing immune responses to brain material.
It'd make sense that the same dynamic happens with the rest of the central nervous system. Would explain why impacts result in damage that only manifests decades later.

 

[Carmona]

I had a Dublin physio about a year ago, he'd been a handy under age player in hurling and football, and what he said about concussion would frighten you. Said fellas playing on wth it were giving themselves a good chance of an early death.

 

[How bad boy]

I had a Dublin physio about a year ago, he'd been a handy under age player in hurling and football, and what he said about concussion would frighten you. Said fellas playing on wth it were giving themselves a good chance of an early death.

It's still fairly inconclusive. The thing with MND and dementia is that they are conditions of old(er) age, so we won't know the results of the HIA protocols until probably 2040, when the first set of professionals who played their whole career under them come into the age where the symptoms really start to manifest (introduced HIA protocols in 2014, a 21 year old pro starting in 2014 would be mid 40s by then).


My eldest young lad really, really wants to play rugby. If he wants to play it when he's older, I'll not prevent him, but I won't facilitate it until the research is clearer.

 

[nelly sham]

Guy Porter retired at 27.

Exclusive interview: Guy Porter retires aged 27 | Rugbydump

As I awoke bleary-eyed this morning, the news of Guy Porter's early retirement appeared like a mirage at the top of X's (formerly Twitter) incredibly cluttered timeline. Was this still part of an oddly clustered dream or had the once promising England tourist decided to call the game he loved quits?

www.rugbydump.com

 

[How bad boy]

Finally some good news on this front:

Concussion risks are outweighed by benefits of amateur sport, study finds

Surprise results have been published after analysis of 15,000 individuals, but the study’s authors stress that the risks in professional sport are very different

www.theguardian.com

A major new study has found that concussions in amateur sport are not linked to greater long-term risks of cognitive decline – and that playing sport may potentially have a “protective” effect on the brain.

The surprise results – published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry – were based on analysing lifetime concussion histories from more than 15,000 participants aged between 50 and 90, making it the largest study of its kind.

Notably, researchers from the University of Exeter, UNSW Sydney, the University of Oxford and Harvard University, also found that people who reported sports‑related concussions actually had a marginally better cognitive performance than those who reported no concussions.

“This study suggests that there could be long-term benefits from sport which could outweigh any negative effects of concussions, which could have important implications for policy decisions around contact sport participation,” she said. “It may also be that non-sports-related head injuries lead to greater brain damage than sports-related concussions.”

...

Of the 15,214 participants in the study, 39.5% reported at least one concussion and 3.2% at least one moderate-severe concussion. Researchers then compared cognitive function among individuals with zero, one, two and three or more sports-related concussions (SRCS) to those with zero, one, two and three or more non-sports-related concussions from falls, car accidents, assaults and other causes. The SRC group showed 4.5 percentile rank better working memory than those who had not experienced an SRC as well as a 7.9% better reasoning capacity than those without concussions.




Obviously, the result isn't that getting concussions improves your brain function, my most important take away from this is it's strong evidence that playing amateur rugby probably doesn't carry a significant risk of cognitive impairment.

That said, the cohort under test are from before rugby changed completely as it professionalised, which did impact on the amateur game, albeit to a lesser degree.