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 Researchers found that young women were nearly six times more likely
to have irregular menstrual cycles after a concussion, compared to
young women who were treated for non-head-related injuries.
After a concussion, women should talk to their healthcare providers
about the increased risk, said senior author Anthony Kontos, of the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion
Program. It's important, he added, "for care providers to be
concerned about menstrual patterns and encouraging women to track
that after their injury."
Irregular menstrual cycles may disrupt the body's hormones and lead
to delayed body development in young women, Kontos told Reuters
Health. Hormone disruption can also lead to poor bone health.
Concussions result from a hit or blow to the head that causes the
brain to move back and forth or twist inside a person's skull,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A study last year by the Seattle Sports Concussion Research
Collaborative estimated that up to 1.9 million children in the U.S.
experience a sports-related concussion each year. Girls are also
known to have a more difficult concussion recovery than buys, Kontos
and his colleagues write in JAMA Pediatrics.
Hormone disorders are known to occur after traumatic brain injuries,
they add. Some research has suggested menstrual disorders are more
common after those types of injuries, too.
For the new study, the researchers recruited 68 girls and women,
ages 12 to 21, who were recovering from concussions. The
participants received a text message every Sunday night for about
four months linking to a survey that asked about their menstrual
cycle. They were asked about bleeding, new injuries, possibly
pregnancies and birth control.
Sixty-one young women with non-head-related injuries were also
surveyed every week.
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About 24 percent of concussion patients had at least two abnormal
menstrual cycles during follow-up, compared to 5 percent of patients
with other types of injuries.
Kontos said concussions might increase the risk of irregular
menstrual cycles by disrupting the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian
axis, a group of hormone-emitting glands that often act in concert.
Dr. Jeffrey Bazarian, an emergency physician and brain injury expert
at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, told
Reuters Health a concussion could interfere with the pituitary gland
in the center of the brain.
"It’s possible that this also happens to males and the question is
how does it effect them," said Bazarian, who was not involved in the
new study.
The researchers can't yet explain their findings, however. Nor can
the study prove concussions actually cause abnormal menstruation.
Kontos also said it's unclear whether the increased risk of abnormal
menstrual patterns lasts beyond four months.
"We don’t know beyond that," he said. "It’s one of the studies we’d
like to do."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2sRbdp9 JAMA Pediatrics, online July 3, 2017.
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