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The NFL’s and NCAA’s approach to diagnosing concussions currently leaves a lot to be desired, but that may no longer be the case in the near future now that the FDA has given a revolutionary new blood test its seal of approval.
The fact that football players started wearing helmets around a century ago means people have been aware of the downsides that come with playing the sport for a very long time.
While people back then could be forgiven for not being intimately familiar with the potential ramifications of succumbing to a concussion, you may not know protective headwear was actually introduced around the same time the medical community started researching what was known as “punch-drunk syndrome,” a condition associated with boxers that people nowadays refer to as CTE.
As you likely know, it took the NFL longer than it probably should have to acknowledge the well-documented toll concussions have on its players.
In 1994, the league established the Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries Committee to examine the long-term ramifications of repeated blows to the head (it was headed by a Jets team physician who described concussions as an “occupational hazard”). Around a decade later, it published a string of controversial papers downplaying the ramifications before an avalanche of evidence suggesting otherwise forced the biggest football league on the planet to accept a fairly sobering reality.
In 2011, the NFL instituted a concussion protocol that required players to undergo screening after a big hit before being allowed to return to the game (a year after the NCAA did the same).
Three years later, it hired independent physicians to start conducting those tests to prevent team doctors from fudging the results, but there have still been plenty of situations where guys have been given the go-ahead to step back onto the field despite plenty of indicators suggesting that shouldn’t be the case.
In fairness, there’s only so much those doctors can do, as diagnosing a concussion largely hinges on the detection of physical “no-go” symptoms as opposed to a more scientific test—at least until now.
According to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the FDA recently gave its seal of approval to a blood test invented and developed by Abbott Laboratories that’s capable of diagnosing concussions with 95.6% accuracy. The most recent version of what is known as the “i-STAT TBI test,” detects two proteins that are released into the body in the wake of a concussion and eschews the laboratory-based centrifuge that was previously required to come to a conclusion.
Dr. David Okonkwo, who played an instrumental role in the TRACK TBI study that led to the FDA approval, noted they were conducted on patients who were brought to Level I trauma centers but said “We have every reason to believe there is significant overlap with the injuries to athletes who sustain a concussion.”
He also said there’s probably some more work to be done before the tests are harnessed in the medical tent at football games. As things currently stand, blood would have to be drawn from a player to get enough to run the test, but his team is hoping to develop a solution that would only require a small drop taken from the finger.
The NFL would also have to give the test the green light (the outlet points out franchises wouldn’t be permitted to adopt it on their own), but this seems like a very promising step in the right direction.