Ontario’s Minister of Sport, 71-year-old Neil Lumsden, recently announced his decision to donate his brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation Canada to support research on brain injuries. Lumsden played 10 years in the Canadian Football League, winning four Grey Cups and while he knows he had his “ bell rung ” a number of times during his career, he doesn’t believe he has had any long-term neurological damage. Helping researchers find out why his brain seems to be more resilient than some of his teammates motivated his decision.
As if on cue, on Sept. 24, 54-year-old National Football League Hall of Famer Brett Favre revealed during unrelated testimony before the United States congress that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, likely as a result of hundreds of concussions experienced during his storied career. Why have these two athletes had such different outcomes? Assessing and managing concussion While we have some tools to assess and manage concussions at the acute phase, we don’t have much at our disposal to monitor long-term progression.
In the acute phase, concussions are not visible on conventional MRI or CT scans. This is one of the reasons a concussion is also called a “mild” traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Such scans are only sparingly used to rule out more severe TBI consequences such as brain bleeds.
While there are some potential blood-based biomarkers for diagnosing acute concussion, there are very few broadly accessible tools to stud.