Sex Differences in the Spine

Mohan, Manoj; Huynh, Lisa

doi:10.1007/s40141-019-00234-7

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…Of importance, sex‐specific head stabilisation strategies have been shown in response to laboratory‐based perturbation (Alsalaheen, Mccloskey, & Bean, 2019b). Such differences may be due to, at least in part, dimorphisms in spinal anatomy, reportedly linked to increased head‐neck movement in vehicle collisions (Stemper, Pintar, & Rao, 2011), increasing female susceptibility to whiplash and concussive injuries (Mohan & Huynh, 2019). Specifically, the male cervical spine is reported to exhibit greater intervertebral coupling stability than females, with greater vertebral body width and disc‐facet depth (Mohan & Huynh, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex differences in neck strength and head impact kinematics in university rugby union players

Williams

Petrie

Pennington

et al. 2021

European Journal of Sport Science

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Globally, over three million women participate in rugby union, yet injury prevention and training strategies are predominantly based on androcentric data. These strategies may have limited generalisability to females, given the cervical spine is more susceptible to whiplash and less adept at resisting inertial loading. A total of 53 university rugby union players (25 female, 28 male, 20.7±1.8 years) had their isometric neck strength measured. Bespoke instrumented mouthguards were used to record the magnitude of head impact events in six female and seven male competitive matches. Mean female maximal isometric neck strength was 47% lower than male. Independent samples Mann-Whitney U tests showed no significant differences for peak linear head acceleration (female: median 11.7 g, IQR 7.9 g; male: median 12.5 g, IQR 7.0 g p=0.23) or peak rotational head acceleration (female: median 800.2 rad•s -2 , IQR 677.7 rad•s -2 ; male: median 849.4 rad•s -2 , IQR 479.8 rad•s -2 ; p=0.76), despite the mean male body mass being 24% greater than female. Coded video analysis revealed substantial differences in head-impact mechanisms; uncontrolled whiplash dominated >50% of all recorded female impact events and <0.5% in males. Direct head-to-ground impacts comprised 26.1% of female and 9.7% of male impacts, with whiplash occurring in 78.0% and 0.5%, respectively. Overall, the data provided in this study do not support the generalisation of male-derived training and injury-prevention data to female rugby athletes. These results suggest a considerable research effort is required to identify specific weakness of female rugby players and derive appropriate training, injury prevention and return to play protocols.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex differences in neck strength and head impact kinematics in university rugby union players

Williams

Petrie

Pennington

et al. 2021

European Journal of Sport Science

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“…It has been previously reported that there are sex differences between the male and female cervical spine and sex differences in measured head peak-kinematics during rugby union matches. 2 , 22 , 34 , 36 Further to this, there has been no cross-validation study of head acceleration classification algorithms across sports or sexes. Such cross-validation is required to establish the repeatability and generalisability of model-based interpretation of instrumented mouthguard data for head acceleration monitoring.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One area where the population differences may be particularly prevalent are between males and females, due to the differences in cervical spine and the kinematic response of the head during impact. 6 , 22 , 32 , 36 The structure of the male cervical spine results in greater stability and resistance to external loading than the female cervical spine. 22 This results in females experiencing an increased magnitude of displacement and acceleration during vehicle collisions and sporting contact events.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 6 , 22 , 32 , 36 The structure of the male cervical spine results in greater stability and resistance to external loading than the female cervical spine. 22 This results in females experiencing an increased magnitude of displacement and acceleration during vehicle collisions and sporting contact events. 6 , 32 , 36 As the motion of the head is reported to be different during different during these events, it is reasonable to assume that the trends developed by machine learning algorithms may be sex specific.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development of a Head Acceleration Event Classification Algorithm for Female Rugby Union

et al. 2023

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Instrumented mouthguards have been used to detect head accelerations and record kinematic data in numerous sports. Each recording requires validation through time-consuming video verification. Classification algorithms have been posed to automatically categorise head acceleration events and spurious events. However, classification algorithms must be designed and/or validated for each combination of sport, sex and mouthguard system. This study provides the first algorithm to classify head acceleration data from exclusively female rugby union players. Mouthguards instrumented with kinematic sensors were given to 25 participants for six competitive rugby union matches in an inter-university league. Across all instrumented players, 214 impacts were recorded from 460 match-minutes. Matches were video recorded to enable retrospective labelling of genuine and spurious events. Four machine learning algorithms were trained on five matches to predict these labels, then tested on the sixth match. Of the four classifiers, the support vector machine achieved the best results, with area under the receiver operator curve (AUROC) and area under the precision recall curve (AUPRC) scores of 0.92 and 0.85 respectively, on the test data. These findings represent an important development for head impact telemetry in female sport, contributing to the safer participation and improving the reliability of head impact data collection within female contact sport.

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“…Similarly, Li et al [49] found that female rowers exhibit a greater range of motion in the lumbar spine, thorax, and shoulders than males due to more extended positions at the finish. Additionally, various authors have pointed out that female rowers may use their higher spinal flexibility [80] and possibly their spinal alignment [81] to alter their rowing technique and compensate for their lower body size, muscle strength, level of endurance abilities [49] and maximal oxygen uptake [74]. Longer limbs are also an advantage because they allow more force to be generated during rowing and a longer stroke, as the catch and drive components of the stroke involve all four extremities [82,83].…”

Section: Sex Differences In Anthropometric Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Differences in Anthropometric and Physiological Profiles of Hungarian Rowers of Different Ages

Podstawski

Borysławski

Katona

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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The aim of this study was to determine sexual differentiation in the anthropometric and physiological characteristics of Hungarian rowers in different age categories. These characteristics were measured for 15–16-year-old juniors (55 men and 36 women), 17–18-year-old older juniors (52 men and 26 women), and 19–22-year-old seniors (23 men and 8 women). The degree of sexual dimorphism was expressed in units of measurement as percentages and the dimorphism index. In all age categories, females had significantly higher body fat indices. Body fat percentage was determined by electrical impedance and by the Pařízková formula, BMI, and skinfold thicknesses. Males had significantly higher body mass, body height, skeletal muscle mass, sitting height, arm span, lower limb length, and body surface area. Males also scored significantly higher values for the following physiological characteristics: peak power, relative peak power, ErVO2max, jump height, speed max, force max, and relative maximal power. Analysis of anthropometric and physiological characteristics in Hungarian rowers revealed that sexual dimorphism tended to increase with age, regardless of whether it was expressed in units of measurement, percentages, or dimorphism index values. The age-related increase in the sexual dimorphism of Hungarian rowers suggests that training methods should be carefully selected to accommodate the needs of various age and gender groups.

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Sex Differences in the Spine

Cited by 10 publications

References 79 publications

Sex differences in neck strength and head impact kinematics in university rugby union players

Sex differences in neck strength and head impact kinematics in university rugby union players

Development of a Head Acceleration Event Classification Algorithm for Female Rugby Union

Sex Differences in Anthropometric and Physiological Profiles of Hungarian Rowers of Different Ages

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