Brain abnormalities after a single high-school football season

A single high school football season of heavy hits, even without a concussion, led to observable brain abnormalities in a study, the latest evidence to raise questions about the long-term consequences of the popular game.

The findings from 24 high school athletes suggest that a series of small, successive blows to the head can prompt changes in the brains of young people. The research was presented Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

The study didn't look at brain function, so the cognitive effect of the observed brain-structure changes remains unknown. A 2013 analysis of 80 Division I college football and ice hockey players, though, found that the more the brain changed over a single season, the worse athletes did on learning and memory tests.

"There's a lot we don't know about these changes. Do they persist over time? Do they go away? Are they associated with some subtle cognitive changes?" said Christopher Whitlow, an associate professor of radiology at Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina. "We haven't really answered those questions yet, but are planning to in the future."

Most attention to brain injury during football has been focused on professionals. Yet there are only 1,700 NFL players, compared with 2.8 million young people who play the sport in the U.S.

"We know little about head injury risks for those youth football players," Whitlow said. "If we can identify risks, then we can intervene, decrease the risks, and make this sport as safe as possible for all the children who are playing it."

The study is the latest in a series of analyses from Wake Forest's Kinematics of Impact Data Set, or KIDS, project, the largest study of its kind to assess head impacts in youth football.