THURSDAY, July 18, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Alix Popham played in two rugby World Cups and won a Six Nations Grand Slam before retiring in 2011 as a professional in the rough-and-tumble game.

By 2020, he had already been diagnosed with early onset dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disabling brain disease long linked to repeated head trauma.

Emboldened to activism by his experience, Popham helped found Head for Change, which advocates for better ways of preventing brain damage among rugby players.

“This is more evidence that big changes need to happen to protect current rugby players. World Rugby need to get their heads out of the sand and in turn protect the game," Popham said in a news release from Durham University.

Similar to what's been observed in other contact sports such as football and boxing, rugby can leave players with neurological damage long after they've retired.

Now, a new study out of Durham suggests that certain blood biomarkers could predict those players at highest risk for CTE and other neurological issues.

That might allow for earlier interventions that could minimize the damage, researchers said.

Prior research has already demonstrated that retired professional rugby players have a much higher odds for depression, anxiety and irritability compared to amateur rugby players or athletes involved in non-contact sports. 

In the new study, Durham researchers add to what's known about specific components of blood suggestive of neural damage from concussions and other head injuries.

The study involved 56 male professional athletes, all of who gave researchers blood samples about seven years after retiring from their sport.

Thirty of the athletes were retired rugby players who had each suffered five or more concussions during their careers.

Their blood samples were compared to those of 26 retired rugby players with no history of concussions, as well as retired athletes from non-contact sports.

Compared to athletes without high numbers of head injuries, higher levels of certain "serum exosomes" were observed in the blood of retired male rugby players who'd had multiple concussions during their playing careers.

As well, levels of two blood proteins -- serum t-tau and tau-p181 -- were found to be elevated among the retired male rugby players compared to healthy controls. Those proteins are thought to play roles in the development of both Alzheimer's disease and a movement disorder known as motor neurone disease (MND), the Durham team noted.

Finally, the data also showed that retired rugby players tended to have lower blood levels of a "retinoid transport protein" called RBP-4, which is crucial to healthy brain function and development. That supports the notion that medications focused on retinoids might prove to be an effective treatment for brain damage, the researchers said.

“The long-term effects of concussions on rugby players, football players, boxers as well as retired military personnel is a major concern, because of the link to neurodegenerative diseases," said study senior author Paul Chazot, of Durham University’s department of biosciences.

“This study gives us the beginnings of a biomarker toolbox to periodically monitor the brain health of retired contact sportspeople, particularly those with a history of concussion during their career," he said in a university news release.

Chazot said certain interventions are already being looked at, to help "minimize the development of future neurodegenerative disease" in at-risk athletes.

The research is part of the UK Rugby Health Project, first set up in 2016. The study was published July 17 in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

More information

Find out more about CTE at the Alzheimer's Association.

SOURCE: Durham University, news release, July 17, 2024