(HealthDay)—Female soccer players exhibit more widespread evidence of microstructural white matter alteration than males, despite having similar exposure to heading, according to a study recently published in Radiology.
Todd G. Rubin, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study involving 98 individuals enrolled in a larger prospective study of amateur soccer players who were matched in a 1:1 ratio for age and history of soccer heading in the previous 12 months. A total of 49 men and 49 women with median total soccer headings of 487 and 469 per year, respectively, underwent 3.0-T diffusion-tensor imaging.
The researchers identified three regions in which greater heading exposure was associated with lower fractional anisotropy (FA) among men; eight such regions were identified among women. In seven of these eight regions identified in women, women had a stronger correlation between heading and FA than men. For the regions in which heading was associated with FA among men, there was no significant between-sex difference for heading with FA.
“With similar exposure to heading, women exhibit more widespread evidence of microstructural white matter alteration than do men, suggesting preliminary support for a biologic divergence of brain response to repetitive trauma,” the authors write.
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