Tuesday, December 1 | 4:10 p.m.- 4:20 p.m. | T7-SSNR08-8 | Room S502
Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) shows promise as a monitoring biomarker linking head impact exposure to clinical outcomes, researchers have found.
In this Tuesday afternoon session, presenter William Morgan of Parker University in Dallas will share results from a study he conducted with colleagues that used breath-hold CVR fMRI to assess long-term changes in CVR and cerebral blood flow (CBF) across two competitive seasons in youth contact-sport athletes.
The study included 235 youth contact-sport athletes (mean age, 14 years; sports included football, rugby, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, and ice hockey). Participants underwent imaging on a 3T MRI system at pre-season and post-season over two consecutive years. The researchers evaluated the study participants' CVR via breath-hold fMRI and CBF using 3D pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL).
Morgan and colleagues found the following:
· Compared with Year 1 pre-season, Year 1 post-season images showed widespread CVR reductions involving frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, limbic, and cerebellar regions, spanning multiple large-scale functional networks; these anomalies persisted into Year 2.
· CBF showed bilateral reductions in frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices -- most noticeable after Season 1, with smaller but persistent irregularities in Year 2.
· CVR abnormalities were more extensive and showed greater sensitivity to group-level seasonal effects than CBF.
The team concluded that "youth contact-sport participation is associated with early and persistent subclinical cerebrovascular injury, detectable without clinical concussion," and suggested that "breath-hold CVR fMRI may provide a sensitive, clinically feasible approach for detecting subclinical cerebrovascular injury before overt neurological symptoms emerge."
