ArticleJournal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD2016
Perfusion Neuroimaging Abnormalities Alone Distinguish National Football League Players from a Healthy Population.
Article in Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- History of Sport-Related Concussion and Long-Term Clinical Cognitive Health Outcomes in Retired Athletes: A Systematic Review.Journal of athletic training · 2020Pooled it
- The Philadelphia Theta Burst Project: A novel fMRI-guided electric field modeling dataset with reliability metrics.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Long-term neurobehavioral and neuroimaging outcomes in athletes with prior concussion(s) and head impact exposure.The Clinical neuropsychologist · 2025Review
- Traumatic Brain Injury and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: Not Only Trigger for Neurodegeneration but Also for Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy?Biomedicines · 2025Review
- Long-Term Changes in Brain Connectivity Reflected in Quantitative Electrophysiology of Symptomatic Former National Football League Players.Journal of neurotrauma · 2023Article
- Assessing blood oxygen level-dependent signal variability as a biomarker of brain injury in sport-related concussion.Brain communications · 2023Article
- Imaging of neuroinflammation due to repetitive head injury in currently active kickboxers.European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2022Article
- Neuroimaging Biomarkers of New-Onset Psychiatric Disorders Following Traumatic Brain Injury.Biological psychiatry · 2022Review
- Noninvasive magnetic resonance imaging techniques in mild traumatic brain injury research and diagnosis.Human brain mapping · 2021Review
- Developing methods to detect and diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy during life: rationale, design, and methodology for the DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project.Alzheimer's research & therapy · 2021Article
- Impairment of cerebrovascular reactivity in response to hypercapnic challenge in a mouse model of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury.Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism · 2021Article
- Identifying degenerative effects of repetitive head trauma with neuroimaging: a clinically-oriented review.Acta neuropathologica communications · 2021Review
- Neuroimaging Biomarkers of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: Targets for the Academic Memory Disorders Clinic.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2021Review
- Age of First Exposure to Contact and Collision Sports and Later in Life Brain Health: A Narrative Review.Frontiers in neurology · 2021Review
- A novel repetitive head impact exposure measurement tool differentiates player position in National Football League.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Patterns of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow as a Function of Obesity in Adults.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2020Article
- Traumatic brain injury: neuropathological, neurocognitive and neurobehavioral sequelae.Pituitary · 2019Review
- Prevalence and Correlates of Psychological Distress among Retired Elite Athletes: A Systematic Review.International review of sport and exercise psychology · 2019Article
- Unifying Pathophysiological Explanations for Sports-Related Concussion and Concussion Protocol Management: Literature Review.Journal of experimental neuroscience · 2019Review
- Disruption in Brain Phospholipid Content in a Humanized Tau Transgenic Model Following Repetitive Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNational Football League (NFL) players are exposed to multiple head collisions during their careers. Increasing awareness of the adverse long-term effects of repetitive head trauma has raised substantial concern among players, medical professionals, and the general public.
objectiveTo determine whether low perfusion in specific brain regions on neuroimaging can accurately separate professional football players from healthy controls.
methodA cohort of retired and current NFL players (n = 161) were recruited in a longitudinal study starting in 2009 with ongoing interval follow up. A healthy control group (n = 124) was separately recruited for comparison. Assessments included medical examinations, neuropsychological tests, and perfusion neuroimaging with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). Perfusion estimates of each scan were quantified using a standard atlas. We hypothesized that hypoperfusion particularly in the orbital frontal, anterior cingulate, anterior temporal, hippocampal, amygdala, insular, caudate, superior/mid occipital, and cerebellar sub-regions alone would reliably separate controls from NFL players. Cerebral perfusion differences were calculated using a one-way ANOVA and diagnostic separation was determined with discriminant and automatic linear regression predictive models.
resultsNFL players showed lower cerebral perfusion on average (p < 0.01) in 36 brain regions. The discriminant analysis subsequently distinguished NFL players from controls with 90% sensitivity, 86% specificity, and 94% accuracy (95% CI 95-99). Automatic linear modeling achieved similar results. Inclusion of age and clinical co-morbidities did not improve diagnostic classification.
conclusionSpecific brain regions commonly damaged in traumatic brain injury show abnormally low perfusion on SPECT in professional NFL players. These same regions alone can distinguish this group from healthy subjects with high diagnostic accuracy. This study carries implications for the neurological safety of NFL players.
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