New Study Aims to Reduce ACL Injuries in Female Athletes

Strategic Insights -

A new, year-long academic study at Kingston University in London has received funding from football's world governing body, Fifa, to investigate the relationship between menstrual cycles and serious knee injuries in female athletes. The study aims to help address the issue of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries, which have been prominent in the sport for decades and have been brought into sharp focus in recent years by high-profile cases, including Alexia Putellas and Leah Williamson.

The research team, led by PhD student Blake Rivers, will analyse hormone concentrations from blood samples collected from 20 to 25 adult female players, aged between 18 and 35, and examine how they perform specific movement tests at different stages of their individual menstrual cycles.

"We know the hormones fluctuate within those different phases of the menstrual cycle and some of them might be related to things like increased ligament laxity or decreases in neuromuscular control," says Dr Simon Augustus, senior lecturer in sport biomechanics. "What we want to do then is to correlate that with how they perform certain physical-performance tests so, in terms of being able to identify ACL injury risk, we do things like change-of-direction tests or a landing test, and really we want to see whether the changes we see in terms of physiology, in terms of the hormone profiles, whether they extend through to changes in their functional movement patterns and how they actually perform these various tasks which might be ones that are indicative of injury risk."

Key Takeaways:

  • The study aims to investigate the relationship between menstrual cycles and ACL injuries in female athletes, with a focus on identifying potential risk factors and developing strategies to reduce injury rates.
  • The research team will collect blood samples from 20 to 25 adult female players, aged between 18 and 35, to analyse hormone concentrations and examine how they perform specific movement tests at different stages of their menstrual cycles.
  • The study aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of the load-demands placed on the skeletal and muscular systems during the menstrual cycle, with the goal of identifying potential interventions to prevent ACL injuries.
  • The research team, led by PhD student Blake Rivers, will work closely with Dr Simon Augustus, Dr James Brouner, and Dr Michelle Richards from Kingston University.
  • The findings of the study will be sent to Fifa next year and will contribute to a wider effort to reduce ACL injury rates in the women's game.
  • Studies have looked at this topic before but have potentially not been performed very well, and the work being done at Kingston is a smaller part of a much bigger jigsaw puzzle.

Statistics:

  • ACL injuries have been prominent in the women's sport for decades, with recent high-profile cases including Alexia Putellas and Leah Williamson.
  • 14 players in the Women's Super League are currently out with ACL injuries.
  • The study aims to recruit 20 to 25 adult female players, aged between 18 and 35, to participate in the research.
  • The research team will collect blood samples from the participants to analyse hormone concentrations and examine how they perform specific movement tests at different stages of their menstrual cycles.

Sources:

  • "Sexism is the risk factor": football's race to learn more about ACL injuries (The Guardian, May 2024)
  • "The important thing to say with this is it's extremely variable within women. If you think about a menstrual cycle, the 'average', which probably doesn't really exist, is 28-35 days, and we know that within naturally ovulating and menstruating women, there should be a certain profile, but even within that, there's going to be a huge variation in terms of how those hormones are released within the individual." - Dr Simon Augustus, senior lecturer in sport biomechanics.
  • "For them to back it and give us some finance to do the project justice is great for us and great for everyone that is pushing towards a greater understanding of these types of things in the women's game." - Dr Simon Augustus, senior lecturer in sport biomechanics.