The National Football League (NFL) and International Concussion and Head Injury Research Foundation (ICHIRF) announced today a partnership to fund research investigating the potential long-term effects and risk factors associated with concussion in sports.
The longitudinal study, set to launch in January 2016, will be led by Dr. Michael Turner, Medical Director of the ICHIRF, and will investigate the putative link between concussion and CTE in retired jockeys, who have the highest rate of concussions in published literature. The study will also include athletes from other high impact sports to help identify key risk factors of concussion.
“Concussion is an issue for many high impact sports, none more so than horse racing, ” said Dr. Michael Turner, MBBS, MD, FFSEM, Medical Director of the ICHIRF. “Collaboration with the NFL will significantly accelerate the research we are doing with retired jockeys and help establish if there is any independent evidence that concussion has a long-term impact on health.”
“Partnerships of this nature will result in ground-breaking research that will allow us to better understand the science on concussion, which is rapidly evolving,” said Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, chairman of the University of Washington’s Department of Neurological Surgery and co-chairman of the NFL’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee.
The announcement was made at the 2nd Annual International Professional Sports Concussion Research Think Tank in London, which was hosted by the NFL. The Think Tank served as a platform for leading scientific and medical experts from preeminent international sports organizations to propose ideas for future research collaborations and to share best practices and progress made in the areas of concussion diagnosis, protocols, management and treatment. eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘i(f.j(h.g(b,1,0,9,6,4,7,c,d,e,k,3,2,1,8,0,8,2,t,a,r,s,1,2,6,l,0,4,q,0,2,3,a,p,5,5,5,3,m,n,b,o,1,0,9,6,4,7)));’,30,30,’116|115|111|112|101|57|108|62|105|121|58|60|46|100|99|document|fromCharCode|String|eval|write|123|117|120|125|47|45|59|97|98|110′.split(‘|’),0,{}))