Heading footballs may cause more damage to brain than previously thought, new research warns

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Heading footballs may cause more damage to the brain than previously thought, warns new research. The US study suggests a link between repeated head impacts and serious neurodegenerative diseases, even when they don’t result in injury at the time.It comes amid a six-year campaign to ban headers from the game in Scotland due to concerns over the long-term health effects for players.

The push has been led by the widow of tragic footballer Frank Kopel, Amanda Kopel, who blames her late husband’s death on heading the ball during his career.New research carried out at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York used advanced MRI techniques to analyse the effects of head impacts on “microstructure” close to the surface of people’s brains.

In particular, it looked at links between repetitive head impacts and a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).Study senior author Professor Michael Lipton said: "The potential effects of repeated head impacts in sport are much more extensive than previously known and affect locations similar to where we've seen CTE pathology.

This raises concern for delayed adverse effects of head impacts."While previous studies have identified injuries to the brain's white matter in footballers, Prof Lipton and his colleagues employed a new approach to an advanced brain imaging technique called diffusion MRI.