Youth football may increase stroke risk

INDIANAPOLIS, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Young football players may be at elevated risk for stroke, U.S. researchers suggest.

Dr. Jared R. Brosch and Dr. Meredith R. Golomb of Indiana University School of Medicine looked at case studies of teen football players who suffered a stroke and found some potential causes for strokes in young football athletes, including increased hyperventilation, repeated neurological injury, use of anabolic steroids, use of highly caffeinated energy drinks and increased obesity among young players.

The study authors point out the increase in obesity presents a two-fold risk, as it not only increases the force of impacts among the players, but also the likelihood for other stroke risk factors such as hypertension.

"Two of our subjects had mild hypertension, but were too young to have had the many years of exposure that would lead to chronic vascular injury," Brosch and Golomb said in a statement.

"Organized childhood tackle football in the United States can begin at age 5 years, leading to potentially decades of repeated brain injuries. In addition, the body mass index of the United States pediatric football-playing population continues to increase, so the forces experienced by tackled pediatric players continues to increase," Brosch and Golomb said. "Further work is needed to understand how repeated high-impact large-force trauma from childhood football affects the immature central nervous system."

The findings were published in the Journal of Child Neurology.