Uninjured athletes may get concussion symptoms
Young athletes who experience concussion-like symptoms, but without a recent concussion should be checked for other illnesses like ADHD or migraines, says a new study.
Grant L. Iverson, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and coauthors sought to clarify factors associated with concussion-like symptoms in uninjured adolescents using data from more than 30,000 student athletes.
The authors found symptom reporting was more common in girls than boys and that in the absence of a recent concussion, 19% of boys and 28% of girls reported a group of symptoms similar to postconcussional syndrome.
Preexisting psychiatric, developmental (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] and learning disability) and neurological factors (e.g., migraines) were associated with higher rates of reporting symptoms that resemble postconcussional syndrome at baseline.
Prior treatment of a prior psychiatric condition was the strongest indicator for symptom reporting in boys, followed by a history of migraines. For girls, the indicators were prior treatment of a psychiatric condition or substance abuse and ADHD.
While prior concussions were modestly associated with increased risk for reporting clusters of symptoms, they were less so than preexisting developmental and psychiatric factors.
Category: Features, Health alert
