DKR Research Fund Announces UT Southwestern Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute CLEAATS Study of Later-Life Brain Wellness in College Athletes

College Level Aging Athlete Study (CLEAATS) Will Track the Broadest, Most Diverse Pool Ever Studied to Advance Knowledge of the Later-Life Impacts of Collegiate Sports

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Darrell K Royal Research Fund today announced the launch of the University of Texas Southwestern Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute's College Level Aging Athlete Study (CLEAATS), a study designed to advance medical science's understanding of how participation in collegiate sports and resulting sports-related concussion may impact brain wellness in later life. A new investigation at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the O'Donnell Brain Institute is seeking to recruit 500 individuals — 250 men and 250 women — over age 50 who played an NCAA or NAIA sport for at least one season in college to participate in the study.

"There is a lot of fear and misinformation in the public space about the relationship between athletics and brain wellness," said Dr. C. Munro Cullum, co-principal investigator of CLEAATS. A professor at UT Southwestern, Dr. Cullum is a clinical neuropsychologist who specializes in the assessment of cognitive disorders. "Most previous studies focused on professional American football players, largely because they garner such a high level of public and media interest. However, we are expanding the sphere of study well beyond those limitations to broaden and deepen the pool of knowledge available to researchers and perhaps even remove some of the fears and misconceptions surrounding this subject."

"It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of this study for generations of young athletes and the contributions its findings will make to the body of knowledge critical to understanding later-life outcomes of athletic participation for men and women alike," said Dr. Margot Putukian, advisor to the principal investigators. Dr. Putukian is chief medical officer (CMO) for Major League Soccer, and the former director of athletic medicine, head team physician and assistant director of medical services at Princeton University. Dr. Putukian is board-certified in internal medicine and sports medicine and is a past president of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM). She also serves as a senior advisor on the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee and is an expert on matters related to return-to-play directives following head injury and concussion.

The DKR Fund provided a $500,000 grant and multi-year commitment to UT Southwestern's O'Donnell Brain Institute to conduct the landmark study, which will focus on athletes who played sports in college but did not go on to play professional sports. It will study participants in both contact and non-contact sports and will track a broader, more diverse pool of former athletes than any previous research effort. Importantly, where previous studies of the link between sports participation and brain injuries have focused almost exclusively on males, CLEAATS will concentrate equally on potential effects on female athletes and will examine various aspects of brain health.

"The aim of CLEAATS is to broaden our field of knowledge by studying the impacts of sports on college athletes who never played sports professionally, male and female athletes and participants in a wide range of sports, including non-contact sports such as swimming, tennis, gymnastics, and track and field," said Dr. Hunt Batjer, co-principal investigator of CLEAATS. Dr. Batjer is an internationally recognized cerebrovascular surgeon and a luminary in academic neurosurgery.

Dr. Batjer brings a unique perspective to the CLEAATS study as a former athlete having attended the UT Austin on an athletic scholarship for baseball and was drafted out of high school by the Baltimore Orioles as a left-handed pitcher. Formerly, the chair of neurological surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Chicago and UT Southwestern Dallas, he also served as co-chair for the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee. Currently, Dr. Batjer is emeritus professor at UT Southwestern and adjunct professor at The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science and serves as treasurer on the board of directors for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

There are many underlying issues to be considered in analyzing brain wellness in later life. Why does a person who suffered one sports-related concussion develop persisting symptoms including cognitive dysfunction, whereas another person who had ten concussions does not? The reason could lie in genetics, lifestyle choices, pre-existing vulnerabilities, other physical events such as a car accident and/or other trauma. Is the person with a brain injury more likely to suffer depression or anxiety? Most concussions have good outcomes, but understanding who is actually at risk for problems later in life, and why, remain important questions.

"While there have been many studies of professional athletes, nothing of significance has been conducted on amateur athletes as they relate to long-term brain injury, and no study has been as diverse in scope as CLEAATS," said Debbie Hanna, president of the Darrell K Royal Research Fund. "The results of this study will be an important part of the continuing legacy of Coach Royal and has the strong support of Edith Royal who, now well into her 90s, continues to be the driving force behind the DKR Research Fund. No one has ever cared more deeply about the well-being of college athletes than Coach and Mrs. Royal, so it is a fitting initiative for this organization to fund and stand behind." 

To understand just how skewed available information is, one only needs to look at the number of students of both genders participating in sports across America. According to the latest data available from the NCAA, as of April 2020, eight million students played high school sports and 431,386 students participated as NCAA athletes. Only a select few within each sport will ever move on to compete at the professional level. Approximately 56% of those college athletes were male and 44% were female. Over the next five years, the percentage of Americans participating in sports activities daily is expected to increase at an annualized rate of 0.5% to 19.5%.

"We worked long and hard to ensure we have the best of the best involved in this study," said Hanna. "CLEAATS will be rigorous, robust and has passed all necessary hurdles required for medical research worthy of national acclaim and prestige. We are proud that the work the DKR Research Fund is doing with UT Southwestern will have a lasting, positive impact on society's ability to reasonably balance the risks and rewards of participating in collegiate sports."

Participants will complete online surveys and a brief telephone interview about their history of athletic participation and current aspects of wellness, mood and cognition. For more information on how to enroll in the study, visit https://cleaats.com or contact Hannah Doggett via email at [email protected].

Established in 2012, the Darrell K Royal Research Fund is building a legacy of lasting significance in honor of a man whose contributions to the lives of so many cannot be measured. This research fund is taking a lead in providing a high profile and increasing national awareness of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disease's feared and little understood by people over age 55. With no cure and no drugs available to alter the course of this disease, the DKR Fund is helping advance the pace of research into Alzheimer's disease, as well as the association with traumatic brain injury. Coach Royal's courage gives voice and a face to a disease that has too long been hidden behind closed doors. For more information, visit https://www.dkrfund.org.

UT Southwestern, one of the nation's premier academic medical centers, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty has received six Nobel Prizes and includes 25 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 16 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The full-time faculty of more than 2,800 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide care in more than 80 specialties to more than 117,000 hospitalized patients, more than 360,000 emergency room cases, and oversee nearly 3 million outpatient visits a year.

SOURCE Darrell K Royal Research Fund