Do Males and Females Respond Differently to Concussions?

The majority of people play sports that can result in head injury.  When a head injury is hard enough a concussion may occur.  A new study on mice shows that the symptoms and time it takes to recover from the concussion can depend on the patient’s gender. This is important news because it is could change how different genders receive treatment to concussions. Thus understanding how sexes differ after a concussion might allow for better treatments for each.

Ramesh Raghupathi, a neuroscientist at Drexel University, notices that a lot of the brain injury research looked at its effects on males exclusively. He thinks scientists have assumed that females would respond the same way to concussions as males. Raghupathi comments that females are just as susceptible to concussions as males, so why the lack of research on the effects on females? Raghupathi and his team decided to address this problem by giving concussions to mice of both sexes.

When a concussion occurs to someone they might experience dizziness, nausea and memory problems.  These problems can culminate into depression due to constant headaches and a never-ending feeling of sadness. They would look for these effects in mice by looking at how they swim. When a mouse can’t escape a pool, it may give up and float. Researchers describe this as being similar to depression. This serves as an animal model for that condition in people.

Researchers found that one to two months after a concussion, male mice would be the first to give up and float. Females, however, kept swimming. From these results we can hypothesize that after brain injury males might be more prone to depression after a concussion than females. On the other hand,  female mice reacted a different way. They became more sensitive to touch. Raghupathi describes this sensitivity as a marker of migraines and the sensitivity to light and touch. We can hypothesize that females have a greater risk of migraines following concussions.

This is a study done on mice granted so we cannot be totally sure if the same results apply to humans. But if it does this could greatly influence how we treat concussions in different genders and make the treatment more specialized per gender.

Source: https://student.societyforscience.org/article/males-and-females-respond-head-hits-differently

3 thoughts on “Do Males and Females Respond Differently to Concussions?

  1. Brian D Wess

    I had not considered that males and females could respond differently to concussions, interesting post! While as you said just because male and female mice responded differently that does not mean male and female humans will respond differently but it is fascinating and there could be something more here. I’m not sure if there are any brain or skull differences between men and women that would effect how each would recover from a concussion but there are differences with some injuries such as females are more likely to tear their anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in their knee than men are. https://www.orlandoortho.com/acl-tears-women-common-men/

  2. Caroline Rose Ackiewicz

    I definitely thought it was interesting that men and women could potentially have different reactions to concussions. However, gender is not the only factor that can change how people are affected by concussions, age can also play a factor. It takes a longer amount of time for people aged 13-16 to return to their baseline state of health (measured in categories such as verbal and visual memory, reaction time, and post-concussion symptom scale) than 18-22 year olds. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23227435

  3. Catherine Mott

    This post is interesting due to the study on concussions between a male and female. It is neat to understand the study of mice and how it can reflect among us as humans. I had a concussion and when i had mine, i didn’t suffer from depression but I had migraines all day every day. I had to sit in dark rooms because my head hurt so bad, and my eyes were so susceptible to any light that shined through. Again, you said we can hypothesize that women are more prone to migraines, and I am just one person. I am sure it differs from person to person. Your image of the brain once one gets a concussion is also quite fascinating. It is interesting to see what exactly happens to the brain and how it shifts the brain when a concussion occurs. Overall, this a very well written post, and i like how at the end you say we cannot guarantee the results to be accurate, and you are right because there can always be third variables involved that could change the outcome.

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