Starting Boys in Football Before Age 12 Could Be Particularly Damaging | By Benjamin Ryan | Virtually Modern Medicine
Forget “mothers don’t let their sons grow up to be football players.” Should parents let their children play the game at all, given the mounting evidence of myriad long-term detrimental effects associated with the repetitive head injuries incumbent to the contact sport?
At the very least, a new study raises pressing questions about what age is safer for boys to begin with the pigskin.
Boston University researchers analyzed more than 200 former football players, including those who played professionally and one-time amateurs, and found that those who took up the game before they turned 12 were more likely to experience key brain-related impairments later in life. These deficits included troubles with behavior regulation, depression and what is known as executive function, which includes analyzing, planning and organizing tasks.
Such increased risks held regardless of the men’s age, how long they played football, whether they were professional or amateur players, and their level of education.
A previous small study of former National Football League players found that those who started the game before the age of 12 had greater levels of dysfunction in their verbal memory in middle age compared with those who started at that age or later. Now investigators have broadened their scope to research former amateurs as well.
“Overall, our study provides further evidence that playing American football before age 12, and being hit in the head repeatedly through tackle football during a critical time of brain development, is associated with later-life problems with mood and behavior,” said Robert Stern, PhD, a professor of neurology at the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center and the corresponding author of the new study, which was published in the open access journal Translational Psychiatry.
Even when they do not lead to actual concussions, the repetitive head injuries common to football can cause key alterations to the structure and function of the brain. These abnormal changes may ultimately drive the cognitive, behavioral and mood dysfunction that researchers have observed among some professional football players.
In the new study, the research team scored questionnaires meant to assess executive function, depression and behavioral regulation among 214 former amateur and professional football players. The men, who had an average age of 51, had not played other contact sports. The investigators also assessed the study participants’ cognitive function through a standardized test conducted over the phone.
To the researchers’ surprise, they found no link between the age men started playing football and measures of their cognitive function, including their reasoning, memory and attention. It is possible, the investigators theorized, that if they had conducted a more thorough, in-person analysis of the men’s cognitive abilities, their data may have been richer and better positioned to identify such associations.
The study authors adjusted their data to account for particular key differences between the men, including age, level of education and how long they played football. They found that, compared with the men who started at age 12 or after, those who took up the game before that age were more than twice as likely to have high scores on a scale measuring overall sense of apathy, impaired executive function, and a compromised ability to regulate their behavior. The pre-age-12 players were also three times more likely to suffer from depression.
Because this study only relied on measurements taken at one point in time, it cannot identify whether starting football at a younger age did indeed cause these negative outcomes. Additionally, the findings are not generalizable to women or to those playing other contact sports, such as soccer. Nor was the study able to measure how differences in types of protective headgear may have affected the various brain-related outcomes.
As for reasons why starting football so young may have been associated with such harms, the study authors noted that age nine to 12 is a key period of brain maturation and development among males, in particular in the hippocampus and amygdala, which are key to the regulation of emotion and behavior. Two previous studies found that even at this tender age, boys playing football tend to experience about 250 head impacts per season.
These concerns notwithstanding, Stern is not actually one to sweepingly discourage boys from taking up football, noting that youth sports offer players myriad social and health benefits.
“The goal is to make sure that children can take advantage of all of the benefits of sports participation without the risk of long-term brain injury or disease,” he said. “More research on this topic is needed before any recommendations on policy or rule changes can be made.”
In the meantime, Stern advised, a growing body of scientific evidence has helped stress the importance of minimizing repeated hits to the head in sports of all kinds, and at all levels of play.
TAGS: #FootballInjuries #HeadInjury #VirtuallyModernMedicine @Pharmative
Forget “mothers don’t let their sons grow up to be football players.” Should parents let their children play the game at all, given the mounting evidence of myriad long-term detrimental effects associated with the repetitive head injuries incumbent to the contact sport?
At the very least, a new study raises pressing questions about what age is safer for boys to begin with the pigskin.
Boston University researchers analyzed more than 200 former football players, including those who played professionally and one-time amateurs, and found that those who took up the game before they turned 12 were more likely to experience key brain-related impairments later in life. These deficits included troubles with behavior regulation, depression and what is known as executive function, which includes analyzing, planning and organizing tasks.
Such increased risks held regardless of the men’s age, how long they played football, whether they were professional or amateur players, and their level of education.
A previous small study of former National Football League players found that those who started the game before the age of 12 had greater levels of dysfunction in their verbal memory in middle age compared with those who started at that age or later. Now investigators have broadened their scope to research former amateurs as well.
“Overall, our study provides further evidence that playing American football before age 12, and being hit in the head repeatedly through tackle football during a critical time of brain development, is associated with later-life problems with mood and behavior,” said Robert Stern, PhD, a professor of neurology at the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center and the corresponding author of the new study, which was published in the open access journal Translational Psychiatry.
Even when they do not lead to actual concussions, the repetitive head injuries common to football can cause key alterations to the structure and function of the brain. These abnormal changes may ultimately drive the cognitive, behavioral and mood dysfunction that researchers have observed among some professional football players.
In the new study, the research team scored questionnaires meant to assess executive function, depression and behavioral regulation among 214 former amateur and professional football players. The men, who had an average age of 51, had not played other contact sports. The investigators also assessed the study participants’ cognitive function through a standardized test conducted over the phone.
To the researchers’ surprise, they found no link between the age men started playing football and measures of their cognitive function, including their reasoning, memory and attention. It is possible, the investigators theorized, that if they had conducted a more thorough, in-person analysis of the men’s cognitive abilities, their data may have been richer and better positioned to identify such associations.
The study authors adjusted their data to account for particular key differences between the men, including age, level of education and how long they played football. They found that, compared with the men who started at age 12 or after, those who took up the game before that age were more than twice as likely to have high scores on a scale measuring overall sense of apathy, impaired executive function, and a compromised ability to regulate their behavior. The pre-age-12 players were also three times more likely to suffer from depression.
Because this study only relied on measurements taken at one point in time, it cannot identify whether starting football at a younger age did indeed cause these negative outcomes. Additionally, the findings are not generalizable to women or to those playing other contact sports, such as soccer. Nor was the study able to measure how differences in types of protective headgear may have affected the various brain-related outcomes.
As for reasons why starting football so young may have been associated with such harms, the study authors noted that age nine to 12 is a key period of brain maturation and development among males, in particular in the hippocampus and amygdala, which are key to the regulation of emotion and behavior. Two previous studies found that even at this tender age, boys playing football tend to experience about 250 head impacts per season.
These concerns notwithstanding, Stern is not actually one to sweepingly discourage boys from taking up football, noting that youth sports offer players myriad social and health benefits.
“The goal is to make sure that children can take advantage of all of the benefits of sports participation without the risk of long-term brain injury or disease,” he said. “More research on this topic is needed before any recommendations on policy or rule changes can be made.”
In the meantime, Stern advised, a growing body of scientific evidence has helped stress the importance of minimizing repeated hits to the head in sports of all kinds, and at all levels of play.
TAGS: #FootballInjuries #HeadInjury #VirtuallyModernMedicine @Pharmative
Nice article Ben.