R. Dawn Comstock, PhD, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on May 13 that despite girls and boys playing by the same rules, using the same equipment and practicing in the same facilities, girls have higher concussion rates than boys, as reported by FiveThirtyEight.
Here are five points:
1. Dr. Comstock is also the author of a 2015 study published in JAMA Pediatrics that quantified concussions in high school soccer and found that they were about one and a half times more common in girls than in boys.
2. During a recent Pink Concussions meeting, Shannon Bauman, MD, a sports medicine physician at Concussion North in Canada, presented data on 207 male and female athletes examined at her clinic over two years found the female patients had an average of 4.5 counts of objective physical signs of concussions compared with 3.6 for the male patients. Pink Concussions is an organization seeking answers as to how concussions affect women and girls.
3. Dr. Bauman's data also shows that females take longer to heal. Thirty-four percent of men and boys who come to the clinic finished treatment within two months, while only 12 percent of concussions in women and girls improved this fast. About 35 percent of females were still experiencing concussions six months or more after their injury.
4. A study conducted by researchers from the University of Rochester (N.Y.) School of Medicine and Dentistry and published in The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation found mild traumatic brain injuries heal less quickly when sustained during certain phases of the menstrual cycle, proposing that the difference may come down to progesterone levels.
5. Several U.S. women's national soccer team players have recently pledged to donate their brains after they die so research can be done on whether women are also more vulnerable to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative condition that may be linked to concussions.