Abstract #0275

Quantifying differences in the cerebral blood flow (CBF) between controls, professional boxers and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters using arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI

Virendra R Mishra¹, Karthik Sreenivasan¹, Xiaowei Zhuang¹, Zhengshi Yang¹, Sarah Banks¹, Dietmar Cordes¹, and Charles Bernick¹

¹Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas, NV, United States

The professional fighters brain health study (PFBHS) is a longitudinal study of active professional fighters with age-matched healthy controls using multimodal MRI methods. Using ASL-MRI, we report for the first time that cerebral blood flow (CBF) is significantly lower in boxers and mixed-martial-arts fighters (MMA) than age-matched healthy controls. Most of the clusters were located in the fronto-temporal lobe, cerebellum and thalamus. No significant difference in perfusion between boxers and MMA suggests that type of combat sports have an indiscernible effect on CBF, further suggesting that perfusion may not account for different patterns of cognitive decline observed later in the life of these athletes.

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