The difference between male and females has been known for a little while as the females tend to show more cognitive issues and in research have shown to be slower at recovering. Also known but for some reason discounted is the age aspect; it would be logical to expect a developing brain to struggle more with brain trauma. Reuters wrote up an article about the recent research;
Female and high school athletes may need more time to recover from a concussion than their male or college counterparts, according to a U.S. study that comes amid rising concern about concussions in young athletes.
Researchers, whose report appeared in the American Journal of Sports medicine, found that of 222 young athletes who suffered a concussion, female athletes tended to have more symptoms than males. They also scored lower on tests of “visual memory” – the ability to recall information about something they’d seen.
Meanwhile, high school athletes fared worse on memory tests than college players, and typically took longer to improve.
For parents, coaches and athletes, the key message is to have patience with concussion recovery, said lead researcher Tracey Covassin, an assistant professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Research like this will now begin to be shown to the world, as the research and money has ramped up over the past 3-4 years making longevity and high volume studies available. The simple moral of the story is; take plenty of time to recover before returning. One or two games is better than a semester or year.