New study reveals that benefits of amateur sport outweigh concussion risks

A groundbreaking new study has revealed that concussions in amateur sport are not associated with an increased long-term risk of cognitive decline and that playing sport may even offer a "protective" benefit for the brain.

The unexpected findings, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, are based on the analysis of concussion histories from over 15,000 participants aged 50 to 90, making it the largest study of its kind.

The researchers from the University of Exeter and University of Oxford in the UK, Harvard University in the USA and the University of NSW, also found that people who reported sports‑related concussions actually had a marginally better cognitive performance than those who reported no concussions.

One of the paper’s authors, Prof Vanessa Raymont from the University of Oxford, said the findings could have policy implications for contact sports, stating “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.

“It may also be that non-sports-related head injuries lead to greater brain damage than sports-related concussions.”

Nonetheless, the authors stressed that their findings did not apply to concussions in professional sport, which “tend to be more frequent, debilitating and severe”.

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.

As reported by Guardian Australia, the results were broadly welcomed by Professor John Fairclough of Progressive Rugby, who commented “this retrospective study supports the assertion that compared to the elite game, the community game is relatively safe, and concussion and long-term neurological risk is in the main outweighed by the physical, mental and social benefits enjoyed.

“All contact sports pose a risk, but with continued steps to educate, mitigate risk and ensure concussion protocols are strictly observed we have always maintained the community game can continue to become even safer and more sustainable.”

Professor Fairclough went on to caution that there were still “legitimate concerns about children participating in contact sports”, noting that more studies were needed “to establish the risk around juveniles being exposed to contact sport while their brain is undergoing key periods of development”.

He went on to say “it is also important to note that this study was not set up to and cannot determine the risk to professional players who are subjected to a far higher number and frequency of impacts to which degenerative brain diseases including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) are associated.”

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