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The most comprehensive study of concussions that looked at college athletes in a number of sports and the military will now turn its focus to what happens to those injured after graduation.

The NCAA-DOD Concussion Assessment, Research and Education Consortium, known as the CARE Consortium, has received an additional $22.5 million from the U.S. Department of Defense and the NCAA to expand its focus from the campus to the four years in the real world.

“What the money is going to do is allow us to pivot from a study of the acute effects of concussion to answering questions about whether there are cumulative or persistent effects of concussion,” said Dr. Thomas McAllister, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine and one of the study’s leaders.

IUSM is partnering with the University of Michigan, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Uniformed Services University on the study of more than 39,000 student athletes and cadets from 30 colleges and military academies. Nearly 4,000 of those studied sustained concussions during their collegiate careers.

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Most previous studies of concussion have focused on the immediate effects of concussion on football players. The CARE study moved off the gridiron onto other playing fields.

The initial study found that it took about two weeks for participants who suffered a concussion to get back to normal activities – about twice as long as previously thought. Women take about a day longer than men to recover, McAllister said.

About one in four or five take even longer than average, waiting about a month before they are cleared to play, he added.

“This is a larger percentage than what had traditionally been the clinical lore,” McAllister said. “Now what we’re trying to do is figure out why that is.”

The next phase of the study will focus on whether concussions sustained in college have long-term impacts. Participants will undergo clinical tests of balance and memory as well as answer questionnaires designed to assess their psychological health.

While many of those who participate will be civilians who are injured on the playing field, the study also includes a number of cadets at military academies, who may also be at risk of suffering mild head injuries. Nearly $10 million of the new money came from the Department of Defense.

By the end of the study, McAllister said, he and his collaborators hope to have collected data that will help clarify how risky it can be to participate in college sports, such as whether there is a threshold for the number of concussions one must undergo before experiencing longterm effects.

“This is really an opportunity to try to answer some of the questions that have been vexing the field for quite some time,” he said.

Call IndyStar staff reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky. 

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