Football players may experience different degrees of brain damage after concussions depending on what position they play and how long they stick with the sport, a small US study suggests.
Researchers examined data from brain scans of 61 former college and professional football players who didn’t have any symptoms of cognitive impairment. One technique, known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), looked at the structural integrity of white matter, which connects different parts of the brain; the other test, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), measured brain function while participants competed memory tasks.
Former college players with three or more concussions had more extensive white matter damage than their counterparts with one concussion or less, researchers report online October 31 in Radiology. But the opposite was true for athletes who went on to play professionally.
“Our findings suggest that a career with additional exposure to football is not necessarily worse than a shorter duration of exposure,” said senior study author Kevin Guskiewicz, research director of the Centre for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“In addition to imaging findings, there were no differences on standard cognitive tests between those players with a longer career compared to those with a shorter career,” Guskiewicz told Reuters Health by e-mail.
One of the most vexing issues with treating concussions in athletes is that the full extent of brain injuries can be difficult to assess while players are still alive. In particular, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can only be diagnosed during an autopsy. 
According to tentative evidence from UK scientists, repeated headers during a footballer’s professional career may be linked to long-term brain damage. 
The research follows anecdotal reports that players who head balls may be more prone to developing dementia later in life.
The Football Association says it will look at this area more closely.
Experts said recreational players were unlikely to incur problems.
Dawn Astle, the daughter of former England and West Brom striker Jeff Astle, who died aged 59 suffering from early onset dementia, said it was “obvious that it [his dementia] was linked to his footballing career”.
The inquest into his death in 2002 found that repeatedly heading heavy leather footballs had contributed to trauma to his brain.
In February this year Dawn Astle told BBC Radio 5 Live: “At the coroner’s inquest, football tried to sweep his death under a carpet. They didn’t want to know, they didn’t want to think that football could be a killer and sadly, it is. It can be.”
She said her father was 55 and physically very fit when he went to the doctor, who diagnosed him with the early onset of dementia.
By the end he “didn’t even know he’d ever been a footballer”, she said, before adding: “Everything football ever gave him, football had taken away.”
Researchers from University College London and Cardiff University examined the brains of five people who had been professional footballers and one who had been a committed amateur throughout his life.
They had played football for an average of 26 years and all six went on to develop dementia in their 60s.
While performing post mortem examinations, scientists found signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in four cases.
CTE has been linked to memory loss, depression and dementia and has been seen in other contact sports.