Amateur boxers suffer brain damage

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Amateur boxers suffer brain damage too

05 May 2007

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19426023.000-amateur-

boxers-suffer-brain-damage-too.html

It will come as a body blow to supporters of amateur boxing. Unpaid

exponents of the noble art suffer brain damage just like their

professional colleagues, despite wearing headgear.

Max Albert Hietala at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg,

Sweden, and his colleagues examined the cerebrospinal fluid of 14

amateur boxers. Levels of neurofilament light (NFL), a marker for

neuronal damage, were four times as high in boxers after a fight as

in healthy non-athletes, and up to eight times as high in boxers who

had taken more than 15 high-impact hits to the head. Levels took

three months to return to normal, they told a meeting of the American

Academy of Neurology in Boston on Wednesday.

" There is probably no safe dose of blows to the head, " says Vivienne

son, head of science and ethics at the British Medical

Association, which is campaigning for a total ban on boxing.

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Carruthers

Wakefield, UK