RunRagged wrote:
Some more info on sex differences that make females more likely to suffer serious injury from blows to the head and neck:
Female athletes are not only 1.9 times more likely to sustain a concussion in any given sport; they also tend to have more severe symptoms, and to take longer to recover.
Same injury, different brain: Exploring how women’s trauma recovery differs from men’s
Surveys and analysis of health record data by the Stanford researchers and others continue to find stark differences in how men and women experience severe brain injury.
But there’s also a physical clue: The imaging research suggests a link between a physical trait of women’s brains — a thinning of part of the cortex — and the tendency to experience a different array of post-brain injury symptoms than men do.
Important brain structures that are key for signaling in the brain are narrower and less dense in females, and more likely to be damaged by brain injuries, such as concussion. Long-term cognitive deficits occur when the signals between brain structures weaken due to the injury.
“Clinicians have observed for a long time that females suffer from concussion at higher rates than males in the same sports, and that they take longer to recover cognitive function, but couldn’t explain the underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon,” said senior author Douglas Smith, MD, a professor of Neurosurgery and director of Penn’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair. “The variances in brain structures of females and males not only illuminate why this disparity exists, but also exposes biomarkers, such as axon protein fragments, that can be measured in the blood to determine injury severity, monitor recovery, and eventually help identify and develop treatments that help patients repair these damaged structures and restore cognitive function.”
Women at much higher risk of depression after traumatic brain injury, analysis finds
Women are nearly 50% more likely than men to develop depression after suffering a concussion or other traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to an analysis of nine studies and nearly 700,000 people presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2023 annual meeting.In this community-based cohort [of 14,376 participants] with 25-year follow-up, head injury was associated with increased dementia risk in a dose-dependent manner, with stronger associations among female participants and White participants.
Ya ra ra ra la la, the sky is falling, men are concussing women with fragile skulls and necks, haaaaaalp!
Meanwhile we don’t even know exactly what tests IBA administered.