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Touchline issue 22 | November 2015 | 13
High school aged female athletes, particularly in the area of
track and field, are at a significantly higher risk of developing
potentially sidelining repetitive motion and mechanical
overuse injuries than male peers in the same age group.
Lead researcher Dr. Thomas Best and his team evaluated
3,000 cases of male and female sports-related injuries over
a seven year period across 20 common high school sports
including track and field, soccer, volleyball, and lacrosse. Dr.
Best and his team found that female athletes suffered the
most injuries across several sports.
The data showed that the highest rate of injuries acquired in
girls track and field, followed by girls field hockey and girls
lacrosse.
The results of the study are not very surprising, said
Dr. Steven Meier, an orthopedic sports surgeon and
YOUNG FEMALE ATHLETES AT HIGHER RISK FOR SPORTS-RELATED OVERUSE INJURIES
regenerative medicine expert at Meier Orthopedic Sports
Medicine in Beverly Hills.
Young athletes are putting in more time practicing and
competing than ever before, which can lead to pain, stress
fractures, and knee and joint pain, and muscle and tendon
strains and tears.
The researchers found that the typical high school athlete
spends as many as 18 hours each week practicing a single
sport, with the most common overuse injuries found in the
legs, knees, and shoulders.
Overuse injuries were found to be most common among
young athletes from the ages of 13 - 17, accounting for twice
as many orthopedic sports medicine cases as traumatic
impact injuries.
FAKE SPORTS GOODS COST EUROPEAN INDUSTRY €500 M.
The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM)
has released a report detailing the economic cost of
counterfeits within the sports goods sector in the European
Union.
The products deemed by OHIM to be within this sector
mainly consist of sporting equipment such as golf clubs,
tennis rackets and balls, skis, etc. Goods which can be worn
as normal clothing were excluded from the study, on the
basis that they were better categorised within the clothing
and footwear sector.The report estimates that the industry
loses approximately €500 million of revenue annually as a
result of fake goods in the EU market place – a figure which
represents 6.5% of the sector’s overall sales.
The biggest impacts of counterfeit goods were seen in
France and Spain, which together accounted for a third of
total EU lost sales. The figure in the UK was slightly lower –
at an estimated 10%.
It is also estimated that other sectors of the economy lose
a further €361 million per year due to the consequential
reduction of cross-selling of goods between industries.
BRAIN TRAUMA WIDESPREAD AMONG HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PLAYERS
Seven years of research into the impact of head trauma in
high school players points to new dangers that parents will
find extremely alarming.
“We are seeing changes in brain activity even without a
diagnosed concussion, even without any sign or symptoms
showing up and that occurs in a large population of our
subjects,” said Larry Leverenz, a clinical professor of health
and kinesiology at Purdue University.
More than half of the players participating in the trials
showed signs of altered neurological function and dramatic
changes to the wiring and biochemistry of their brains,
according to a series of studies published by the Purdue
Neurotrauma Group.
They focused their research on pre-concussive head injuries,
which up until now went largely ignored due to a lack of
symptoms such as dizziness or disorientation associated
with a concussion.
“It’s not just the neurons that get damaged, it’s the glial cells,
it’s the vasculature,” said Eric Nauman, a mechanical and
biomedical engineering professor at Purdue University.
“Basically in football and woman’s soccer about half the
team is experiencing these kinds of things, these kinds of
changes.
Some of them heal and some of them don’t by the time they
start playing their next season, and that was the thing that
really got us nervous,” he added.
The researchers placed sensors on the athletes to record
impact forces and coupled that data with brain scans and
cognitive tests to track neurological function over the course
of the trial.
They found hits to the head that up until now were
considered less dangerous may be the most dangerous of
all because they go unnoticed, occur more frequently and
cause damage that could result in long-lasting neurological
problems.