Indiana University student athletes will be part of the largest-ever research effort on concussions. The IU School of Medicine is teaming up with the University of Michigan and the Medical College of Wisconsin for the effort, which is entering its second year.
The U.S. Department of Defense and the NCAA are funding the three-year, $30 million consortium that will involve thousands of athlete participants from as many as 30 universities.
"We really don't have a clear idea of what we call the natural history of [concussions]," says Thomas McAllister, the chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the IU School of Medicine. "How long does it really take to get better? Most of what we know comes from men playing American football, so we know relatively less about concussions in women and concussions associated with other sports, whether they're contact sports or not."
To start, researchers will study 7,200 student athletes from 12 universities, but that number could grow as research progresses, possibly expanding to nearly 37,000 students at 30 schools.
McAllister says the large sample size will provide a wealth of information and will allow researchers to study subjects in a systematic way. He says that's something smaller studies just haven't been able to do.
"The biggest sort of hindrance to concussion research and answering these questions is you need a lot of people who are concussed," he says. "You need to study them carefully at several time points. That's a very time consuming, expensive enterprise."
McAllister says the research effort could continue to improve how concussions are handled both in athletics and in everyday life.