Interesting article about concussion in rugby

[Lee Bushwacker]

Shane Christie, rugby concussion campaigner who wanted to donate his brain, dead at 39

New Zealander suffered multiple concussions

www.irishexaminer.com

Rest In Peace.

 

[nelly sham]

AFL piece:

https://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/heartbreaking-twist-in-death-of-adam-hunter-as-disease-uncovered-posthumously/news-story/c0c1667e3def44df88f03a34888055b2

 

[El Guapo]

Lewis Moody, I don't know if the formal link between MND and CTE/Concussion have been established yet but the wieght if numbers is startling

it's all very sad

Lewis Moody diagnosed with motor neurone disease

Former England captain and 2003 World Cup winner Lewis Moody has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

www.rte.ie

 

[nelly sham]

Lewis Moody, I don't know if the formal link between MMD and CTE/Concussion have been established yet but the wieght if numbers us startling

it's all very sad

Lewis Moody diagnosed with motor neurone disease

Former England captain and 2003 World Cup winner Lewis Moody has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

www.rte.ie

Heard that on the radio this morning.
Sad that at this stage once I heard "former Englandy Rugby player, Lewis Moody ..." I knew what was going to be said.


Saw a picture of Ed Slater recently too, he's already wheelchair bound. Poor fella.

 

[How bad boy]

Lewis Moody, I don't know if the formal link between MMD and CTE/Concussion have been established yet but the wieght if numbers us startling

it's all very sad

Lewis Moody diagnosed with motor neurone disease

Former England captain and 2003 World Cup winner Lewis Moody has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

www.rte.ie

It's not a directy link between CTE and MND, but there is a strong direct link between MND and rugby

Yep.

Former rugby players may be 15 times as likely to develop motor neuron disease, study finds

The risk of neurodegenerative disease among former Scottish international rugby union players is more than double that of the general population, a study has found.1 The researchers from the University of Glasgow matched 412 Scottish former international male rugby players with 1236 members of...

www.bmj.com

"The researchers from the University of Glasgow matched 412 Scottish former international male rugby players with 1236 members of the public and looked at their health outcomes over an average of 32 years from the age of 30 onwards.

They found that the risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease varied by specific condition, from just over twice as high for dementia to up to 15 times as high for motor neuron disease."

The baseline rate for the population is 1 in 350.

That said, it wasn't a huge study, 412 subjects is not a big enough population to be very certain of the effect, it's international standard players and the cohort lives a few years longer than the overall population.

Additionally, it's obvious that rugby isn't close to as unhealthy as NFL

https://www.science.org/content/article/former-football-pros-die-faster-rate-baseball-veterans-and-reasons-are-surprising

The 517 former NFL players who died during that 35-year period did so at an average age of 59.6 years.

One way I've cited here in the past is that if the rate of MND is potentially as high as 1 in 23 in the international rugby population, one way to think of it is that if you're watching an international match, 2 of the players from the teams you're watching are probably going to get Motor Neuron Disease, probably as a result of rugby.

 

[Coach and Six]

All rugby players should wear helmets or scrum caps of some kind. End of.

 

[How bad boy]

All rugby players should wear helmets or scrum caps of some kind. End of.

The general consensus is that scrum caps don't do a great deal to protect against concussion. I wore one from the age of about 19 but that was purely because I had the start of cauliflower ears, got it treated and didn't want it to get worse.

It probably is worth investigating whether or not making scrum caps thicker and trialling compulsory scrum caps in a league makes a difference to concussion rates.

They get fucking hot in summer but that's an inconvenience...

Anyway, the exact causes of MND are not known, it mostly affects the autonomic nervous system, but it can affect higher order brain function too.
Weirdly, studies of NFL players have their incidence of it at 4 times the general population, at 15 times for rugby players (in a relatively small study), then it may be unusually prevalent among rugby players.

NFL has a much worse problem with head impacts, so improving that may not actually help much. It may be that rugby causes far more generalised impacts across the whole body, damaging the nervous system overall.
Nobody really knows.

 

[El Guapo]

All rugby players should wear helmets or scrum caps of some kind. End of.

Makes no difference in terms of concussion or sub concussive impact. They have made big strides I terms of reducing head accelerations by rule change and the smart mouth guards.

A long way to go but helmets and scrum caps are not the answer

 

[nelly sham]

All rugby players should wear helmets or scrum caps of some kind. End of.

Great for stopping cauliflower ears.
Negligible otherwise.

 

[How bad boy]

Makes no difference in terms of concussion or sub concussive impact. They have made big strides I terms of reducing head accelerations by rule change and the smart mouth guards.

A long way to go but helmets and scrum caps are not the answer

Yeah, a lot of the worst for damage has been significantly reduced.

When you look at old matches, lads shaking off a "heavy hit", the charging scrums that broke a lot of necks, and fellas charging in from 20+ metres away to absolutely destroy a poor defender hanging on in a ruck.

There would have been absolutely nothing illegal in this tackle, besides it being a little high around the shoulders, but certainly nobody penalised:

Those scrums were vicious, the pre-bind has been an absolute game changer for scrum safety

Lads flying in doing this sort of thing is thankfully now mostly out of the professional game, if he stayed on his feet, there would have been absolutely nothing wrong with it as a clear out 20 years ago.