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Título

Digital biomarker-based individualized assessment in professional boxing and MMA athletes: a Digital Neuro Signature in Assessing Sports-Related Traumatic Brain Injury

Resumo

INTRODUCTION: Current computerized neuropsychological assessment (NPA) batteries for athletes at risk of sports concussion (SC) are inadequate proxies for traditional neuropsychological tests and have limited clinical utility in postconcussion assessments. Therefore, it becomes necessary research for new and supplementary methods of NPA on SC. An active digital biomarker-based tool is the Altoida Digital Neuro Signature (ADNS), an augmented-reality based test. A previous trial demonstrated 94% prognostic accuracy to measure dementia progression on patients with Mild Cognitive Disorder (MCI).
OBJECTIVE: Describe a case series of 15 professional fighters who underwent NPA by the ADNS and correlate worse performance with higher burden of subconcussive traumatic events.
STUDY DESIGN: Case series; Level of evidence, 4.
METHODS: The study participants were 15 professional fighters who underwent NPA by ADNS. The mean age was 26.7 years. The higher number of head blows were estimated based on the longer exposure to sparring sessions and conventional training. The sparring hours practiced, measured in hours based on the last month, varied from 1 to 16 hours. The conventional training, measured in hours based on the last week, varied from 5 to 30 hours. Performance measures were computed using the assessment system software (ALTOIDA INC). All significant values reported for correlation between a higher burden of subconcussive events and the ADNS performance were obtained by the Spearman rank, which estimated the coefficient rho (ρ) of the respective analyzed measures.
RESULTS: Subjects performed a series of tests, determined by the ADNS. 8 athletes (53.3%) performed worse on tests that assessed planning skills and cognitive processing speed, despite not reporting complaints in the initial interview. Statistical analysis showed correlation between higher number of subconcussive events and poor performance on ADNS, mainly on tests that assessed cognitive processing speed (ρ = -.689, p < 0,01), and planning skills (ρ = -.644, p < 0,01). We also observed that 9 athletes (60%) met diagnostic criteria for diseases associated with sports practice.
CONCLUSION: These results show linear correlation between higher exposure to subconcussive events and worse performance on ADNS. In summary, this study adds to the literature describing a new neurocognitive assessment method called Altoida DNS, on assessing cognitive decline at professional fighters.