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Preliminary Report: Cerebral blood flow mediates the relationship between progesterone and perceived stress symptoms among female club athletes after mild traumatic brain injury

Female athletes are severely understudied in the field of concussion research, despite higher prevalence for injuries and tendency to have longer recovery time. Hormonal fluctuations due to normal menstrual cycle (MC) or hormonal contraceptive (HC) use have been shown to impact both post-injury symptoms and neuroimaging measures, but have not been accounted for in concussion studies. In this preliminary study, we compared arterial spin labeling measured cerebral blood flow (CBF) between concussed female club athletes 3-10 days post injury (mTBI) and demographic, HC/MC matched controls (CON). We test whether CBF mediates the relationship between progesterone levels in blood and post-injury symptoms, which may be evidence for progesterone`s role in neuroprotection. We found a significant three-way relationship between progesterone, CBF and perceived stress score (PSS) in the left middle temporal gyrus. Higher progesterone was associated with lower (more normative) PSS, as well as higher (more normative) CBF. CBF mediates 100% of the relationship between progesterone and PSS (Sobel`s p-value=0.017). These findings suggest progesterone may have a neuroprotective role after concussion and highlight the importance of controlling for the effects of sex hormones in future concussion studies.