top of page
Search

"The Brain Behind the Game" : a full reading list for the YouTube episode

Notes, sources, and more for Stem Cell Revolution's recent deep dive into sports, concussions, and CTE



Hopefully, you've already enjoyed the most recent episode of Stem Cell Revolution (SCR), available on YouTube and Spotify. (If you haven't seen it yet, it's available above. Click here for more episodes on an array of topics, and please check back each month when new conversations drop!). This month, Houston is proud to host the World Cup, which makes it the perfect time to open dialogue about brain health in contact sports.


There's a lot to talk about for both youth and adult athletes, amatuer and professional. We brought lots of numbers to the table - concussion counts, hit counts, the share of donated NFL brains with CTE, our own trial results — and somewhere in the YouTube description, we simply ran out of room! If we met our mission, however, you'll walk away from the episode convinced the issues deserve critical thought, which means you'll want those numbers at your fingertips.


This page constitutes an answer to that anticipated demand, and a tool to continue the conversation. Each and every source cited or referenced on this episode of SCR is found below, in order of mention, with basic context on each information cluster. We hope it's helpful. Want more, or have questions or thoughts to share? Please leave a comment on the YouTube video, and join us in developing solutions.


How big the problem actually is

Americans incur millions of sports- and recreation-related concussions a year. These episode-opening sources examine how injury rates compare across sports, and reveal that in sports where the rules are consistent, girls and women are often concussed at higher rates than boys and men.


References:



The hits nobody counts

The damage story, however, is not entirely about the concussions we notice. Rather, the most prominent injury story may be about the hundreds of smaller impacts a player absorbs over a season that are moved through or past, and never logged — an estimated 240 a year in youth football, several hundred more by high school, and more than a thousand in college.


References:



What years of play do to the odds

Within the last five-to-ten years, research has convincingly demonstrated that each year of tackle football raises CTE risk by about 30%, and that the cumulative force of total hits — not the number of diagnosed concussions — is what tracks with disease development.


References:



Why starting young is its own risk

Age-of-first-exposure research reveals youth players, aged 8 to 13, none of whom were diagnosed with a concussion, suffered measurable changes in their brains' white matter by the end of their contact sport season.


References:



How concussions get measured — and missed

Though there have been laudable strides in concussion treatment as recognition of effects continues to grow, the space between "symptom-free" and "brain-recovered" continues to be overlooked and underreported.


References:



CTE and what shows up later

Research into the long-term effects of CTE are sobering. One prominent study finds that of athletes who died before the age of thirty, many already had CTE. Contrary to popular assumption, most of these individuals never played past the amateur level.


References:



The soccer data

Though this episode of SCR coincides with the World Cup, the findings transcend a specific season or sport. In one study we referenced, Scottish researchers followed thousands of former professional players for years and found their risk of dying from a neurodegenerative disease was several times higher than the general population; because a later look ruled out obvious lifestyle explanations, the most plausible explanation is sustained and repeated impact to the brain.


References:



Why the damage lingers

As we know from our work in neurodegenerative conditions at Hope Biosciences, inflammation inside the brain that does not simply switch back off after the injury externally heals. One autopsy study found signs of neuroinflammation as late as decades after a single hit. "It was years ago, they're fine now” can be a dangerous assumption when embraced as foundational to research or healthcare.


References:



Where the science goes next

Hope Biosciences remains committed to developing solutions tor brain injury and degeneration at all levels of severity through FDA-authorized research. Of most recent note, a peer-reviewed piece in Brain presents findings of a 24-patient clinical trial utilizing our proprietary cellular therapeutic, conducted at UTHealth Houston. This is one of two such clinical trials in TBI at UTHealth, backed by the Department of Defense.


Learn more in another SCR episode:




References:    



Aaaannnddd.....that's a wrap on references and resources from our most recent episode of SCR! Please keep watching, join the conversation, and share widely with your community.


Much, much more hope to come....



bottom of page