BALTIMORE: A recent study of retired football players by Johns Hopkins medical researchers adds to growing evidence linking football with brain damage.
The study focused on nine retired football players, but the results add to a growing body of research and anecdotal accounts associating brain disease with the blows to the head that are a common part of football and other sports.
Using an improved brain-imaging technique, Hopkins researchers found evidence of brain injury and repair in the former football players while it did not appear in a control group of nine healthy men had who never played professional football.
Because of the small number of subjects and lack of consistent results, however, the retired players’ cognitive performance tests did not present clear evidence of mental impairment, said the researcher who conducted that part of the study…