RESUMEN
Football exposes its players to traumatic brain, neck, and spinal injury. It is unknown whether the adolescent football player develops imaging abnormalities of the brain and spine that are detectable on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The objective of this observational study was to identify potential MRI signatures of early brain and cervical spine (c-spine) injury in high school football players. Eighteen football players (mean age, 17.0 ± 1.5 years; mean career length, 6.3 ± 4.0 years) had a baseline brain MRI, and 7 had a follow-up scan 9-42 months later. C-spine MRIs were performed on 11 of the 18 subjects, and 5 had a follow-up scan. C-spine MRIs from 12 age-matched hospital controls were also retrospectively retrieved. Brain MRIs were reviewed by a neuroradiologist, and no cerebral microbleeds were detected. Three readers (a neuroradiologist, a neurosurgeon, and an orthopedic spine surgeon) studied the cervical intervertebral discs at six different cervical levels and graded degeneration using an established five-grade scoring system. We observed no statistically significant difference in disc degeneration or any trend toward increased disc degeneration in the c-spine of football players as compared with age-matched controls. Further research is needed to validate our findings and better understand the true impact of contact sports on young athletes.
RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association of multi-modality neuroimaging features and cognitive function in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHODS: Nine individuals with amnestic MCI (aMCI), fifteen patients with mild probable AD, and eleven age-controlled cognitively normal controls (NC) were recruited. All participants were administered with mini-mental status examination (MMSE) and Cognitive assessment screening instrument (CASI) to assess general cognitive function. Optimized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used for the analysis with 3-D high resolution anatomical images. Values of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean apparent diffusivity coefficient (ADC) were measured from different brain regions on diffusion-tensor images (DTI). The relationship between structural atrophy and DTI-based measurements in the selected brain regions was examined. RESULTS: The scores of MMSE and CASI were correlated with the volumetric changes in such areas as temporal, frontal and parietal lobes, and cingulate gyrus and hippocampal gyrus (P<0.001). The scores of MMSE and CASI were positively correlated with FA values, and negatively with ADC values in the white-matter-affected regions including temporal, frontal, parietal lobes, cingulate gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive decline was associated with atrophy and white matter microstructural alterations in temporal, frontal, parietal lobes, cingulate gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus in MCI and AD. Multi-modality imaging technique may be important in elucidating the brain mechanism of cognitive impairment.
