Study finds brain tissue 'changes' in kids who played one season of football

Player safety concerns over head injuries in the NFL have trickled down to youth football.

In a study released Monday, researchers at the Wake Forest School of Medicine found that head impact exposure — the type that doesn't result in concussions — in youth football leads to "changes in the brain’s white matter," the tissue responsible for communication in the brain.

Exactly what "changes" means, however, is something the researchers themselves don't know yet.

Increased safety concerns in youth and professional football have led to a hyper-awareness of head injuries in recent years. The NFL — which finally admitted the link between football and concussions earlier this year — pledged $100 million to concussion research initiatives last month.

Dr. Christopher Whitlow and his team studied youth football players ages eight to 13 over the course of a season. The players wore helmets that tracked head impact, and underwent brain scans before and after the season.

And while "changes" in brain tissue might sound scary, there's really no way of knowing how they could affect children's lives. The researchers are unclear whether or not the changes are permanent. The changes are so subtle, in fact, that brain experts wouldn't be able to identify evidence of brain trauma if they didn't see the brain scans before the season started.

The only point of concern, according to Whitlow, is the fact that white matter is still developing in kids of that age, so certain changes could have lasting effects on brain function. Per Time, Whitlow will follow some players for a longer duration to see how additional head impact affects the results.

"Football is a physical sport, and players may have many physical changes after a season of play that completely resolve," Whitlow said. "These changes in the brain may also simply resolve with little consequence. However, more research is needed to understand the meaning of these changes to the long-term health of our youngest athletes."

Player safety is such a major issue in the NFL right now, it's not surprising to see that same concern in other levels of football.

And with participation in youth football on the rise, this latest study could give parents another reason to fret.