<div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>There's a growing body of understanding around the potential brain health risks of contact sports, but a new study suggests people should add soccer to that category.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Repeated head trauma that can be a result of long-term participation in sports like boxing, and contact football has been linked to chronic traumatic encelaphopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease that can only be diagnosed post-mortem.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>While the Australian Sports Commission notes more research needs to be done to establish the full context of how a person develops CTE, including genetic and other lifestyle factors, governing bodies for sports such as rugby league, rugby union, and American football have come under pressure over their duty of care to players.</span></div></div><div><div id="adspot-mobile-medium"></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><strong><span>READ MORE:</span></strong><span> </span><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/christopher-webster-doctor-erin-patterson-case-sanctioned/6b60e2f6-7b4a-4883-8338-699b90496d95" target="_blank"><strong><span>Doctor who blew whistle on mushroom murderer sanctioned</span></strong></a></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>But even as some wary parents opt to nudge their children away from contact sports into soccer as a safer option, a new study out of the US has warned that a particular act could also be having a marked effect on players' brains.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's the "header", the act of projecting the ball forward with a headbutt, that is the culprit.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>The new study, published by a research team from Columbia University, found that heading the soccer ball could damage an area at the front of the brain dubbed the "orbitofrontal grey matter-white matter interface" (GWI) - a site of changing brain tissue composition.</span></div></div><div><div class="OUTBRAIN" data-reactroot="" data-src="//www.9news.com.au/national/soccer-act-can-cause-brain-damage-us-study-says/d08673d7-7449-4e1b-801c-ebe94a49cb54" data-widget-id="AR_5"></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><strong><span>READ MORE:</span></strong><span> </span><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/world/new-zealand-man-issued-ticket-for-eight-second-car-park/5769995d-ed51-4c93-972a-0eef68d12198" target="_blank"><strong><span>'Obscene': Driver given ticket for 'eight seconds' in parking spot</span></strong></a></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Researchers had previously established that repeated head impacts of any sort could be detrimental to the brain, but the precise site where these changes were reflected was not fully understood.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>This time, they investigated 352 adult amateur soccer players, aged between 18 and 55, all of whom had played for at least five years and for at least six months a year currently.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Those who had headed the ball more often had measurable changes to their GWI.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><strong><span>READ MORE:</span></strong><span> </span><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/world/earthquake-strikes-off-russia-coast-tsunami-warnings/97051698-3940-4e03-9870-587bb90ee815" target="_blank"><strong><span>Tsunami warnings after huge Russian quake</span></strong></a></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>They also performed more poorly on a memory test involving remembering a shopping list of items.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>"Soccer is the most popular sport worldwide and, in part due to the practice of heading (i.e, intentionally hitting the ball with the head), may be the greatest source of RHI (repetitive head impacts)," the authors wrote.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>The full study can be found online </span><a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2839068" rel="" target="_blank" title="here"><span>here</span></a><span>.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/how-to-follow-9news-digital/29855bb1-ad3d-4c38-bc25-3cb52af1216f" target="_blank"><strong><em><span>DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP</span></em></strong></a><strong><em><span>: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. 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