- THURSDAY, July 10 (HealthDay News) — Being female and having a history
of concussions both slow recovery from a concussion among young athletes,
according to a new study done on soccer players.

The researchers, expected to present their findings Thursday at the
American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine annual meeting in
Orlando, Fla., urged doctors and coaches to treat concussions on a
case-by-case basis.

“The results of this study suggest that physicians should not be taking
a one-size-fits-all approach to treating concussions,” co-author Alexis
Chiang Colvin, sports medicine fellow for the Department of Orthopaedics
at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said in a news release
from the society. “Our study shows that patients with a history of a
previous concussion perform worse than patients without a previous history
on neurocognitive tests taken after they sustain a concussion.
Furthermore, females perform worse than males on post-concussion testing,
as well.”

A concussion is an injury to the brain that results in temporary loss
of normal brain function, usually caused by a blow to the head.
Concussions can affect memory, judgment, reflexes, speech, balance and
coordination.

The authors chose to examine concussions in soccer players, ranging in
age from 8 to 24, because of the sport's popularity, similar rules among
both genders, and because helmets are not worn during play.

The study of 234 soccer players (61 percent female, 39 percent male)
found that females did much worse than males on reaction time tests.
Females also showed more symptoms than males.

Players who had previous concussions performed significantly worse on
verbal memory testing after another concussion, the study found.

“There's a theory that males typically have a stronger neck and torso
that can handle forces better,” Colvin said. “But when we accounted for
body-mass index in this study, we still found a difference between males
and females. Therefore, there are differences in recovery between genders
that cannot simply be attributed to size difference. More studies are
needed to determine the reason for differences in recovery between males
and females.”

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about brain and head injuries.