Recent evidence suggests that concussion history may be associated with long-term structural and functional changes in the brain. However, little is known about the effects of head injury on vascular reactivity. In this study, we combined hypercapnic and hyperoxic respiratory manipulations to explore the effects of concussion history on hemodynamic latencies and tissue cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) in football players. We found that, although tissue CVR was not different between the groups (P>0.05), time delays to hypercapnia were shorter in subjects with a history of concussion (P<0.05), which may suggest some compensatory mechanism in the vasculature that persists beyond clinical recovery.
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