ArticleMedicine and science in sports and exercise2019
Repetitive Head Impacts in Football Do Not Impair Dynamic Postural Control.
Article in Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Head Impact Research Using Inertial Sensors in Sport: A Systematic Review of Methods, Demographics, and Factors Contributing to Exposure.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2022Pooled it
- The effects of repetitive head impacts on postural control: A systematic review.Journal of science and medicine in sport · 2021Pooled it
- Sex, but not exposure-related variables, predicts baseline serum glial fibrillar acidic protein and neurofilament light levels in contact sport athletes.BMJ open sport & exercise medicine · 2026Article
- Smooth Pursuit Velocity After a Season of Repetitive Head Impacts in American Football Players.JAMA ophthalmology · 2025Article
- Associations of Collegiate Football Career and Incident Concussion with Players' Health: A Longitudinal Study from the CARE Consortium.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Article
- Longitudinal changes in frontopolar cortex activity during postural tasks in collegiate ice hockey athletes.Neurophotonics · 2025Article
- Immediate and Transient Perturbances in EEG Within Seconds Following Controlled Soccer Head Impact.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2024Article
- Clinical Theragnostic Signature of Extracellular Vesicles in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).ACS chemical neuroscience · 2023Review
- Leveraging football accelerometer data to quantify associations between repetitive head impacts and chronic traumatic encephalopathy in males.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Effects of contact/collision sport history on gait in early- to mid-adulthood.Journal of sport and health science · 2023Article
- Functional Electrical Stimulation for Foot Drop in Post-Stroke People: Quantitative Effects on Step-to-Step Symmetry of Gait Using a Wearable Inertial Sensor.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Repetitive head impacts affect mediolateral postural sway entropy in the absence of vision following a competitive athletic season: preliminary findings.Journal of clinical and translational research · 2020Article
- Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Sports-Related Concussions: Biological Mechanisms and Exosomal Biomarkers.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeThe purpose of this study was to assess the effect of repetitive head impacts experienced by football players compared to noncontact athletes on dynamic postural control during both single-task (ST) and dual-task (DT) conditions.
methodsThirty-four football players wearing accelerometer instrumented helmets and 13 cheerleaders performed a dynamic postural control battery, consisting of ST and DT gait initiation, gait, and gait termination, both prior to and following the football season. A 2 (group) × 2 (time) repeated measures ANOVA compared performance across 32 dynamic postural outcomes. A linear regression was performed on postural control change scores with common head impact kinematics serving as the independent variables.
resultsThe football players experienced a mean of 538.1 ± 409.1 head impacts in the season with a mean linear acceleration of 27.8g ± 3.2g. There were no significant interactions for any of the ST or DT dynamic postural control tasks. There was a significant relationship between head impact kinematics and the lateral center of pressure displacement during the anticipatory postural adjustment phase (r = 0.26, P = 0.010) and transitional phase (r = 0.511, P = 0.042) during ST gait initiation. For both measures, the number of impacts exceeding 98g was the only significant predictor of decreased center of pressure displacement.
conclusionsA single competitive football season did not adversely affect dynamic postural control when comparing football players to cheerleaders who do not experience repetitive head impacts. Furthermore, there were limited relationships with head impact kinematics suggesting that a single season of football does not adversely affect most outcome measures of instrumented dynamic postural control. These findings are consistent with most studies which fail to identify clinical differences related to repetitive head impacts.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.