A new study suggests that some football helmets can prevent concussions by 50 percent.
Researchers from Virginia Tech led by Steven Rowson, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, discovered that Riddell Revolution helmet, which is designed with a better padding, is safer than Riddell VSR4 helmet.
The researchers recruited 1,833 football players who participated on college football teams in Virginia Tech, Brown, Oklahoma, Dartmouth, North Carolina, Indiana, Minnesota, and Illinois. These players were asked to use either Revolution helmet or VSR4 helmet. The helmets were embedded with sensors that helped the researchers in measuring the biomechanics and head acceleration of 1.2 million reported cases of head impacts.
During the study, the researchers get to control the number of times the players smashed their heads, so they believe that their findings are reliable.
After the six-year long study, they found out that players who used Riddell Revolution helmet were 54 percent less at risk for getting concussions.
A concussion is a minor traumatic brain injury that may happen when the head hits an object or vice versa. It can have an effect on how the brain works. A person who suffers from a concussion can have severe headache, loss conscious, have decreased level of alertness, and even amnesia.
The researchers particularly tested Riddell Revolution and Riddell VSR4 helmets because those were the most popular helmets at the time of the study, New York Times reports.
Stefan Duma, co-author of the study from NeURA Medical Research Institute, explained the difference of the two helmets. He said to Fox News, "The Revolution is slightly bigger and has more padding, with a different shell configuration. All of that adds to lowering head acceleration, and that lower acceleration resulted in a clinically significant lower risk of concussion."
The study was published on the Jan. 31 issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery.
