Brain Health Retired Elite Athletes Clinical Trial
Official title:
An Investigation Into the Long-term Brain Health of Retired Professional Rugby Players, With a History of Concussion/Head Impact Exposure
There has been significant recent interest on the issue of brain health in athletes.
Participation in sports is generally viewed as extremely positive. Consistent evidence
supports associations among exercise, cognitive vitality, neural functioning and decreased
risk of cognitive decline. However, In the last decade, a dramatic shift in both public and
scientific perception around the long-term consequences of concussion is evident. Rugby is a
popular full-contact sport played throughout the world at varying levels of competition,
including professional level. The game exposes players to inherent risk of injury including
repetitive head impacts, due to the high number of collisions and tackles involved. Perhaps
not surprisingly, given the physical nature of the sport, rugby has one of the highest rates
of concussion of all full-contact sports. Evidence from a recent meta-anaysis found the
incidence of concussion to be 4.73 per 1000 player match hours. Given the high incidence of
concussion that has been reported in the literature to date, the issue of concussion and
repeated head impact exposure is of particular concern in rugby.
Comprehensive investigation of cognition in living retired sports persons with previous
exposure to repetitive head impact is noticeably lacking in the literature to date. Findings
are inconsistent and investigations are shrouded by consistent methodological biases and
flaws, reducing the overall quality of the studies. Relatively little research has been
conducted on the long-term effects of repetitive mild TBI or sports concussion on the retired
athlete's brain health with ageing. The potential long-term consequences are poorly
understood and warrant more research. This study aims to investigate the brain health of
retired rugby players in comparison to retired rowers who have achieved the same levels of
exercise, without exposure to SRCs
The primary aim of this study is to investigate brain health and wellness of retired
professional Irish rugby players in comparison to retired professional Irish rowers.
Objectives:
The objectives will be to:
Obtain detailed demographic and overall health information from the retired rugby players and
retired rowers.
Use a battery of cognitive function tests to assess the cognitive health of the retired rugby
players and retired rowers.
Obtain blood samples from the retired rugby players and retired rowers in order to test for
biomarkers indicative of neurodegenerative disease.
Investigate rugby player's self-report history of sports-related concussion (number and
nature of concussions) during their career. Player's self-report will be correlated where
possible with established individual player medical data.
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