The benefits of sport may out way any risk of dementia, when it comes to amateur athletes who suffer concussions.
Amateur athletes who suffer concussions while playing sports may not face the long-term cognitive decline often associated with head injuries, a study suggests.
These athletes may even experience better cognitive performance in some areas compared to those who never sustained a concussion.
Researchers, including those from Oxford University, Exeter University and Brunel, Imperial College and Kings College London along with the University of New South Wales in Sydney, suggested this finding pointed to a potential protective effect of sports participation.
More than 15,000 people aged between 50 and 90 took part in the study of sports-related concussions, which was carried out by academics at the University of Exeter, UNSW Sydney, the University of Oxford, and Harvard University.
Professor Anne Corbett, from the University of Exeter, said: “What we see emerging is a completely different profile of brain health outcomes for people who have concussions as a result of sport compared to those that are not related to sport.
“Concussions that occur during sport do not lead to brain health concerns whereas other concussion types do, especially when people experience multiple concussions.
“In fact, people who take part in sport seem to have better brain health regardless of whether they have had a concussion whilst taking part or not.”
Lead author Dr Matt Lennon, from UNSW Sydney, said: “Our findings suggest that there is something about playing sport, even though a person may experience concussion, that may be beneficial for long-term cognitive outcomes.
“While it may be that those who play sports have had access to better education and more resources, we controlled for these factors in the analysis, so that doesn’t explain the result.
“We hypothesise that there may be physical, social and long-term behavioural effects of sport that may make for healthier adults in late life.”
Researchers collected lifetime concussion histories from 15,214 participants, of which 6,227 (39.5%) reported at least one concussion and 510 (3.2%) at least one moderate-severe concussion.
On average, participants reported suffering their last head injury an average of 29 years prior to the study and their first head injury an average of 39 years earlier.
Researchers then compared cognitive function among individuals with multiple sports-related concussions and those with non-sports-related concussions, such as falls, car accidents and assaults.
The sport-related concussion group showed 4.5% rank better working memory than those who had not experienced a sports-related concussion, and 7.9% better reasoning capacity than those without concussions.
Those with one sport-related concussion also had better verbal reasoning and attention compared to those with no sport-related concussion.
Professor Vanessa Raymont, from the University of Oxford, said: “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.”
But the researchers say the study had some limitations.
“The retrospective design of the study, with elderly participants often recalling details of events over three decades in the past, may have affected the reporting of head injuries, even though we used a well-validated head injury screening tool,” Prof Raymont added.