ArticleSports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.)2025
Associations Between Instrumented Mouthguard-Measured Head Acceleration Events and Post-Match Biomarkers of Astroglial and Axonal Injury in Male Amateur Australian Football Players.
Article in Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Assessing Motion Fidelity During Closed-Head Rotational Acceleration Traumatic Brain Injury in Pigs.Research square · 2026Article
- Head Acceleration Event Exposure during Pre-Season Training in Elite Men's Rugby Union.Sports medicine - open · 2026Article
- Head Acceleration Events Measured by Instrumented Mouthguards in Elite Australian Football.Sports medicine - open · 2026Article
- The Incidence of Head Acceleration Events During Pitch-Based Training and Match Play in Professional Men's Rugby League.Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports · 2025Article
- Sex Differences in Head Acceleration Events in Law Enforcement Corrections Cadets.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2025Article
- The Acute Effects of Non-concussive Head Impacts on Brain Microstructure, Chemistry and Function in Male Soccer Players: A Pilot Randomised Controlled Trial.Sports medicine - open · 2025Article
- Oral Contraceptives, Concussion History, and Contact-Sport Exposure: Multimodal MRI and Brain Injury Biomarkers in Female Athletes.Neurotrauma reportsArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAdvances in instrumented mouthguards (iMGs) allow for accurate quantification of single high-acceleration head impacts and cumulative head acceleration exposure in collision sports. However, relationships between these measures and risk of brain cell injury remain unclear.
aimThe purpose of this study was to quantify measures of non-concussive head impact exposure and assess their association with blood glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), neurofilament light (NfL) and phosphorylated-tau-181 (p-tau-181) levels in male Australian football players.
methodsA total of 31 athletes underwent in-season (24 h post-match) and post-season (> 5 weeks) blood collections and/or wore HITIQ Nexus A9 iMGs measuring peak linear (PLA) and rotational (PRA) acceleration. Match footage was used to verify and code impacts. Blood GFAP, NfL, and p-tau-181 were quantified using Simoa and natural log transformed for analysis. Associations between post-match biomarkers and within match maximum single impact and cumulative PLA/PRA were assessed with linear mixed models.
resultsIn-season versus post-season elevations were found for GFAP (mean difference 0.14, 95% CI 0.01-0.26, p = 0.033), NfL (mean difference = 0.21, 95% CI 0.09-0.32, p = 0.001) and p-tau-181 (mean difference = 0.49, 95% CI 0.33-0.65, p < 0.001). Post-match GFAP was associated with maximum single impact PLA (B = 0.003, 95% CI 0.0002-0.005, p = 0.036), cumulative PLA (B = 0.001, 95% CI 0.0002-0.002, p = 0.017), cumulative PRA (B = 0.01, 95% CI 0.002-0.02, p = 0.014), and impact number (B = 0.03, 95% CI 0.003-0.05, p = 0.029) within a single match. Change in NfL levels between two-matches correlated with cumulative PLA (r = 0.80, 95% CI 0.38-0.95, p = 0.005), PRA (r = 0.71, 95% CI 0.19-0.92, p = 0.019) and impact number (r = 0.63, 95% CI 0.05-0.89, p = 0.038).
conclusionMaximum and cumulative head accelerations in Australian football, measured by iMGs, were associated with elevated blood biomarkers of brain injury, highlighting the potential of both technologies for head impact management in collision sports.
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.