Concussion, Even a 'Mild Version' May Cause Long-Term Health Impacts, New Study Reveals

A new study from a research team across New Zealand found that up to eight years later, adults who had experienced a mild concussion said they had more ongoing symptoms, depression, and problems with work compared to those who never encountered one.

As specified in a ScienceAlert report, "many people will experience a concussion at some point during their life," be it from a contact sport or simply an unfortunate fall.

Nonetheless, even a mild version of this injury can lead to long-term health impacts for a part of those who experience it.

This is not to say that all individuals who suffer from a concussion, also known as mild traumatic brain injury or TBI, will have ongoing symptoms; however, it underscores that concussion can be a life-changing event for those who do not just get better after several weeks.

Traumatic Brain Injury

In their study published in PLOS One, the researchers wrote that it is approximated that over 10 million people suffer from a TBI every year, with 70 to 95 percent of these being classified as mild.

The study authors, led by the University of Waikato psychology researcher Nicola Starkey also said that TBI has widespread effects, and while the long-term impacts of moderate to severe TBI are well-documented, "much less is known" about the long-term effects of mild TBI.

More than a third or 36 percent of the study participants with mild TBI reported that they thought they were still impacted by the brain injury they had eight years ago.

A concussion can occur anytime a person's head collides with something, such as a steering wheel, the ground, or a knee, or even when his body quickly changes direction.

'Axons'

It is not the collision, though, that's causing the damage. Instead, the forces from the sudden, extreme changes in movement are acting on the brain tissue, stretching out the ends of the neurons, also known as axons.

This can lead to myriad symptoms like loss of consciousness, nausea, headaches, blurred vision, and mood changes.

The study authors discovered that participants through the so-called BIONIC study, which looked at all causes of TBI in Hamilton and Waikato, New Zealand, over one year, from 2010 to 2011.

In this research, even though the team could identify about 1,298 people who have mild TBI, they ended up with 346 individuals that completed the original survey and 151 that completed the follow-up survey eight years later.

The researchers then matched the 151 people with an equal number of controls who had never encountered any concussion.

Long-Term Effects of Concussions

Unsurprisingly, participants who had had a concussion reported more problems. What's surprising, nonetheless, is just how long these symptoms can stick around, for one-third of the participants believed they were still affected by their concussion even eight years after.

Such long-term symptoms were not mild either, with the questionnaires suggesting some people had PTSD, detailed in Mayo Clinic, or anxiety, post-concussion syndrome, and work issues.

The worst effects appeared in women, specifically those who had had multiple concussions. The mild TBI group reported substantially greater post-concussion symptoms than the TBI-free group.

Essentially, females with mild TBI were double as likely to exceed clinical cut-offs for post-concussive and PTSD symptoms compared to other groups, and reported their general health had the greatest effect on time-related work demands, explained the research team in their paper.

In their research, they specifically said twice the proportion of women with repetitive mild TBI exceeded the clinical cut-offs for post-concussive, anxiety, and PTSD symptoms compared with males with repetitive TBI or women with single TBI.

Lastly, the study authors have suggested better injury management and treating any mental health issues that might arise could help lower these long-term consequences.

Related information about concussions is shown on TED-Ed's YouTube video below:

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