Age, previous sports experience, stronger predictors of performance in children than previous concussions, York U study finds

York University

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April 29, 2024, TORONTO – A new study from York University’s Faculty of Health may offer reassuring news for parents whose children have a history of concussion, but want to get back to playing sports. Researchers from York University’s Faculty of Health spent more than a decade scouting fields, rinks and courts across the Greater Toronto Area for participants with a history of concussion and tested their performance on complex eye-hand coordination tasks, finding that age and previous sports experience were larger factors in cognitive-motor integration than a history of multiple concussions. 

“In previous work, we've already shown that kids who have any number of concussions perform worse than children who've never had a concussion, but we did notice there was this subgroup of kids who seemed to perform motor skills just fine within weeks of getting a concussion,” says School of Kinesiology and Health Science Prof. Lauren Sergio. “What we found here suggests that previous sports experience may offer some neuroprotective benefits against the effects of concussion.” 

The York researchers, including Sergio and first author York PhD candidate Nicole Smeha, recruited 223 individuals for the study who have a previous history of concussion and gave them a standard task to perform and a more complex one. While the study mostly looked at children and youth playing hockey, soccer, football and basketball, there were a smaller number of “beer league” adult participants included in the research, with the youngest participant being nine and the oldest 53, with experience also being the more important factor with older players. They also looked at sex, but did not find it to be a significant factor, says Sergio, also the York Research Chair in Brain Health and Gender in Action.

“Our hypothesis was that a higher number of concussions would be the largest factor for cognitive-motor integration, but after analyzing the results we realized there were likely stronger factors at play,” says Smeha. 

Concussions, a form of brain injury, are a complex health issue with most concussions sustained in youth and adolescents under the age of 18. Research shows concussion can lead to deficits in cognitive and motor function, including slower processing speed, increased reaction time, slower upper limb velocity and poorer accuracy. While further injury is a risk, Sergio says that the takeaway message is that multiple factors need to be considered when deciding whether and when to put a kid back into sports after a concussion. 

“If your child has had a second concussion, and they're new to sports, they might be more vulnerable to getting hurt again, because they're not going to be able to perform at the same level, whereas if your kid is playing at a higher level, yes, they’ve still suffered a brain injury, but the neural network controlling movement may be more resilient.” 

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York University is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change, and prepare our students for success. York's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. York’s campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future. 

Media Contact: Emina Gamulin, York University Media Relations, 437-217-6362, egamulin@yorku.ca

 

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Journal

Concussion

Article Title

Sport experience and age account for visuomotor performance more than multiple concussion history and sex

Article Publication Date

28-Apr-2025

 

Dogs with meningiomas live longer with radiation therapy than surgery, Texas A&M researchers find

Study of 285 cases shows radiation nearly doubles average survival time in dogs with brain tumors

Texas A&M University

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Dr. Nick Jeffery examines a dog at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

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Credit: Texas A&M University

Researchers at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) have discovered that dogs with meningiomas — the most common type of brain tumor in dogs — live longer if they receive radiation therapy rather than surgery.

With collaborators at clinics in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, the researchers compared the treatment records of 285 pet dogs with meningiomas and found that the average post-treatment survival rate for radiation therapy was just under two years, while surgery had an average of about 10 months. 

“Whether to perform surgery or radiation for this type of cancer in dogs has been a big question for a number of years,” said Dr. Nick Jeffery, a professor of neurology in the VMBS’ Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences. “It’s too expensive for most dog owners to do both treatments, so knowing which to recommend as the veterinarian is crucial for the patient’s survival and well-being.”

Understanding Canine Meningiomas

Meningiomas are brain tumors that grow out of the membrane lining the inside of the skull and eventually press on the brain. Symptoms vary depending on where the tumors appear, but one common sign in dogs is seizures. 

“Other symptoms include walking in circles, changing behavior and having a lack of coordination with their legs,” Jeffery said. “Meningiomas are also more common in older dogs, especially in breeds like German shepherds, golden retrievers and boxers.”

While radiation treatment for meningiomas can entail several trips to a specialty clinic, most dogs are only minimally affected by the procedure and show few symptoms after treatment.

“Radiation therapy is very targeted toward the part of the brain affected by the tumor, so it tends to be applied in a small area,” Jeffery said. “This typically leads to a more complete removal of the tumor as well as fewer complications later on. For example, there is a post-operative risk for pneumonia that comes with brain surgery in dogs, and radiation avoids that risk.” 

Thankfully, most dogs with meningiomas have a good prognosis.

“Their life expectancy is pretty good compared to other kinds of tumors,” Jeffery said.

Putting New Research Techniques To Work 

This discovery, recently published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, was made possible through application of a statistical technique called inverse-probability weighting estimation that allowed Jeffery and his colleagues to compare clinical cases.

“The ideal method to compare outcomes between different treatments is a randomized controlled trial,” Jeffery said. “But there are many practical obstacles — largely to do with high costs — to doing such a trial for this disease in dogs. 

“The statistical method means we can analyze pre-existing data and take into account various other factors that might influence treatment choices and outcomes to provide a summary comparison of survival after treatment,” he said.

By Courtney Price, Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

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Journal

Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine

DOI

10.1111/jvim.70011 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Comparison of Survival After Treatment of Presumed Intracranial Meningioma by Radiotherapy or Surgery in 285 Dogs

 

American Heart Association stands together with Arkansas and against the soda industry to reduce sugary drink consumption

Association supports banning sugary drink purchases in SNAP, brings science expertise and decades of experience to the fight against the soda industry

American Heart Association

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DALLAS, April 29, 2025 — The American Heart Association, committed to changing the future of health for everyone, everywhere, is standing with Arkansas health officials in their efforts to reduce sugary drink consumption in the face of fierce opposition by the soda industry. The Association submitted written comments today in support of the state’s application to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for approval to prohibit sugary beverage purchases within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The Association calls upon the USDA to quickly grant the waiver.

For decades, the soda industry has opposed efforts by the Association and others to pass meaningful public policies to address the overconsumption of sugary drinks. This outrageous behavior continues with the industry’s opposition to removing sugary drinks from SNAP, even though sugary drinks are among the most purchased items by SNAP participants.

“Arkansas and other states across the country are standing up to the soda industry and taking bold moves to improve the health of their citizens,” said Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association. “The facts are clear - sugary drinks are the largest source of added sugars in the U.S. diet, and sugary drink consumption can lead to cardiovascular disease.”

“The American Heart Association is committed to removing sugary drinks from SNAP, and we are proud to stand in support of Arkansas’s efforts to do so over the soda industry’s unconscionable opposition,” Brown said. “As an organization that has opposed Big Soda for decades, we have worked tirelessly to pass public policies that effectively reduce consumption of sugary drinks. The soda industry is using the same desperate playbook to deceive the public and undermine public policies that could benefit public health.”

The Association is committed to the shared goal of decreasing sugary beverage consumption and increasing consumption of healthy foods. In addition to advocating for reducing sugary drink consumption in SNAP, the Association has worked with public health partners across the country to increase sugary beverage taxes in Philadelphia, Seattle and communities across California, including Santa Cruz most recently in November 2024. The Santa Cruz sugary drink tax takes effect May 1.

For more information on the Association’s commitment to reducing consumption of sugary drinks, visit: Our Commitment to Reducing Consumption of Sugary Drinks | American Heart Association 

Additional Resources:

• Arkansas SNAP Waiver Comments (PDF)

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NIH’s initiative to prioritize human-based research a ‘big win for animals,’ says doctors group

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—The nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which promotes the use of human-based research to improve health and replace animal use, enthusiastically supports the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s landmark commitment to prioritize innovative, human-based methods, like organoids, tissue chips, computational models, and real-world data analyses, while reducing animal use. 

“NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya’s historic announcement that the NIH will prioritize human-based science is not only a big win for animals, but also for human health,” says Catharine E. Krebs, PhD, medical research program manager for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. “We’ve known for a long time that animal experiments don’t reliably translate to human health outcomes, coming at a grave cost to patients in need of better treatments, to innovation, and to animal lives.” 

Animal experiments are poorly representative of human health and disease and rarely predictive of drug efficacy, safety, and toxicity in humans. The reliance on animals is a direct contributor to high failure rates in the drug development pipeline, wasting billions of dollars each year and putting trial participants and patients at risk by failing to capture unsafe or ineffective products. As a result, untold numbers of dogs, cats, monkeys, mice, rats, and other animals are bred and used in painful and deadly research and testing procedures—estimated to be greater than 100 million per year in the United States. 

Innovative 3D in vitro technologies like tissue chips, organoids, and bioprinting, as well as advanced computational modeling and real-world data analyses, are already being used to replace animals in a variety of applications, including disease modeling, precision medicine, and regulatory toxicology. These pioneering methods, also called new approach methodologies (NAMs), use human cells, tissue, and data to replicate human-specific biology and disease characteristics and have enormous potential to revolutionize medical research and testing. 

The announcement details several agency actions to better prioritize innovative human-centered research, including establishment of the Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application (ORIVA) to coordinate NIH-wide efforts to develop, validate, and scale up the use of nonanimal approaches and serve as a hub for interagency coordination and regulatory translation. To promote the broader use of nonanimal approaches, ORIVA will expand funding, training, and infrastructure and help raise awareness of their value in translational success. New funding opportunities will include evaluation criteria that assess methods based on their suitability for the research question, context of use, translatability, and human relevance—factors which should help improve review quality and ensure impartiality toward different methods. To also aid in the review of nonanimal research proposals, grant review staff will participate in mitigation training to address bias toward animal studies—a phenomenon called animal methods bias—and review groups will include nonanimal method expertise. Lastly, the NIH will publicly report on research spending annually to measure progress toward reduction of funding for animal studies and increase for human-based approaches.  

This significant shift builds on steady progress at the agency toward the broader development and use of nonanimal, human-based methods. In 2024, the NIH accepted comprehensive recommendations on catalyzing nonanimal approaches made by an advisory group, including many measures reflected in the announcement, like supporting nonanimal method infrastructure and training and raising awareness of the value of nonanimal approaches. In conjunction, a new program called Complement-ARIE was launched, aimed at speeding up the development, standardization, validation, and use of such methods.  

“NIH investment in nonanimal alternatives has steadily increased over the last couple decades, but as much as half of the agency’s budget still goes toward animal use,” says Krebs. “Today’s announcement is exactly what the medical research enterprise needs to generate real change toward more ethical and effective science.” 

This historic news comes on the heels of the groundbreaking April 10 announcement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to phase out animal testing requirements for monoclonal antibodies and other drugs. These changes are popular among the public: In a recent poll, 85% of Americans agreed that “animal experimentation should be phased out in favor of more modern research methods.”  

Physicians Committee experts have been working toward these changes for many years, advocating for the prioritization of human-centered research and the public reporting of funds going toward animal- and nonanimal-based studies, providing critical feedback regarding challenges and investment opportunities for NAMs, and leading an international collaboration of researchers and advocates aimed at addressing animal methods bias. Earlier this month, the Physicians Committee and 324 scientists, physicians, and other health professionals sent a letter to Director Bhattacharya, asking him to lead the agency in the important shift away from the use of animals in medical research in favor of human-based science. 

 

Nearly one-quarter of e-Scooter injuries involved substance impaired riders

University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences

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Nearly 25% of patients hospitalized for scooter-related injuries wre using substances such as alcohol, opioids, marijuana and cocaine.

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Credit: Joann Elmore, UCLA Health

FINDINGS

Analyzing data from the 2016-2021 National Inpatient Sample, UCLA researchers found that 25% of 7350 patients hospitalized for scooter-related injuries were using substances such as alcohol, opioids, marijuana and cocaine when injured. Published in The American Surgeon, the study also notes that overall scooter-related hospitalizations during the 5-year period jumped more than eight-fold, from 330 to 2705. In addition, the risk of traumatic brain injuries among the substance use group was almost double that of the non-impaired patients. Substance use also increased hospital costs by an average $4,600 per patient.

IMPACT

While the rise in e-scooter’s popularity has coincided with a jump in related injuries, the role of substance use in those injuries had not been previously explored. Given the rising prevalence of substance use in scooter-related injuries, the authors say strategies such as helmet mandates, substance use prevention and infrastructure improvements are needed to mitigate these injury risks.

COMMENT

“In today’s landscape of rapidly growing scooter use, our study highlights how substance use among riders has played a significant role in the rise of severe, costly, and largely preventable injuries,” said Dr. Areti Tillou, vice chair for education in the UCLA Department of Surgery and the study’s senior author. “Our study was limited to hospitalized patients and thus likely underestimates the current rate of injuries. As urban centers continue to expand shared micromobility systems, the growing prevalence of substance use among scooter riders raises serious concerns about rider safety. These findings underscore the urgent need to strengthen safety regulations, enforce helmet use, and reduce substance use among scooter riders to prevent injuries and promote safer, more sustainable urban transportation.”

AUTHORS

Study co-authors are Hannah Benharash, Nam Yong Cho, Troy Coaston, Sara Sakowitz, Dr. Saad Mallick, and Giselle Porter.

 

Media Contact

Enrique Rivero

310-267-7120

erivero@mednet.ucla.edu

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Journal

The American Surgeon

DOI

10.1177/00031348251337140 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

National Prevalence and Associated Outcomes of Substance Use in Scooter-Related Trauma

Parents take a year to ‘tune in’ to their child’s feelings about starting school, research suggests

University of Cambridge

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A team of psychologists led by the University of Cambridge have found that it takes parents about a year, on average, to attune to their child’s attitudes towards school once they start education.

In fact, by Year 1, parental perceptions of how a child feels about school most closely match responses given by the child when they were in Reception class a year earlier.

Scientists say that parents can get a “misleading picture” of a child’s introduction to education, especially if children only talk about school when they have a bad day. 

Now, researchers have teamed up with writer Anita Lehmann and artist Karin Eklund to create a picture book designed to help parents better understand their child's experiences and emotional state during that crucial first year of school.

How I Feel About My School, published today by Routledge, is based on findings from the Ready or Not Study led by Prof Claire Hughes at Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.

The study included two waves of interviews with over 200 children in Reception and Year 1, from over 100 different UK primary schools.

Along with a series of tasks that measure cognitive skills and wellbeing, the children were guided through simple, emoji-based questionnaires about how different aspects of the school day make them feel.

A parent or caregiver (predominantly mothers) also completed interviews about their child that covered everything from mood to sociability and attitudes to school.

In Reception class, Hughes and team found little affinity between children’s thoughts and feelings about school and how their caregivers believed they felt about it.

By Year 1, levels of agreement between children and adults had more than doubled on average, although significant gaps remained. Year 1 responses from parents often matched those given by their children the previous year.

Over both years, researchers found the biggest gaps between the outlooks of parent and child were parents overestimating how happy children are in the classroom, and underestimating how happy children feel in the playground.

“We found a clear and wide gap between how parents think their children feel about the first year of school, and how children actually feel about school,” said Prof Claire Hughes, Deputy Director of Cambridge’s Centre for Child, Adolescent and Family Research.

“Our research shows that it typically takes parents a year to tune into their child’s experiences of school. By Year 1, parents are often only just catching up to where their children were a year earlier.” 

“We wanted to create a book that can help parents connect with their child’s feelings about school much earlier,” said Hughes. “Parents get a misleading picture if children are motivated to talk about their school day only when something has upset them.”

The new picture book follows four young children through a day at school, from arriving at the gates through to playtime, quiet time and show-and-tell, with incidents along the way including lunchtime disagreements and classroom collaborations.

The book’s characters display a variety of behaviours and traits to allow children with a range of personality types to recognise themselves, say researchers. The book has built-in prompts to get children talking more meaningfully about their school day, and how it left them feeling.

“We want to normalise difference. Kids have ups and downs in a day for lots of reasons,” said Hughes. “There can be a tendency to over-medicalise sadness, but getting through a school day is a big deal for children, and problems are a natural part of that.”

Initial Ready or Not findings came out last year in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, as well as in a book: The Psychology of Starting School.

Further findings, just published in the journal Developmental Psychology, suggest that children’s wellbeing at school declines on average between Reception and Year 1. This is perhaps unsurprising for a UK cohort, says Hughes, as Reception is play-based, whereas reading and writing requirements begin in Year 1, so children start to experience the demands of the curriculum.

“A closer understanding of how a child feels about starting school will allow parents to gauge wellbeing and help their child adapt as key stages kick in,” said Hughes. “Happy children are better learners, and the first years of school can set the tone.”   

The published findings from Ready or Not show that greater wellbeing as reported by the child in Reception class predicted higher levels of “self-concept” – how confident a child feels about their ability to read, write and count – by time they are in Year 1.

Hughes points to other UK studies suggesting that children who say they enjoy school at age six tend to achieve better academic outcomes by age sixteen, including higher GCSE exam grades.

“If children can have a positive couple of years at the beginning of school and we can really protect that time for building up their enthusiasm and their confidence, then when things do get more serious, the children are willing to embrace it,” said Hughes.

“We hope the picture book will promote conversations about what happened at lunchtime or in the playground, giving parents a better understanding of their child’s enjoyment of school, and building up an emotional literacy for children.” 

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DOI

10.4324/9781003536888