The Army says it has discovered a simple blood test that can diagnose mild traumatic brain damage or concussion, a hard-to-detect injury that can affect young athletes, infants with "shaken baby syndrome" and combat troops. "This is huge," said Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army vice chief of staff. Army Col. Dallas Hack, who has oversight of the research, says recent data show the blood test, which looks for unique proteins that spill into the blood stream from damaged brain cells, accurately diagnosing mild traumatic brain injury in 34 patients. Doctors can miss these injuries because the damage does not show up on imaging scans, and symptoms such as headaches or dizziness are ignored or downplayed by the victims. If the brain is not allowed time to recover and a second concussion occurs, permanent damage may result. Brain injuries afflict 1.4 million Americans each year, says the National Brain Injury Association. Source: USA Today
The trainers I spoke with at my university compare hits in football to drops of water in a bucket. Even if one doesn't cause a diagnosable concussion, they absolutely build up and damage the brain.
The point is, I would guess, that you can determine an amount of the unique proteins where it's a concussion (or serious) and a range where the player would need to be assessed carefully. I suspect if the teams do Blood tests now (covering the rest of the season) to find how these proteins are popping up, they might become quite concerned generally at the state of NFL players (and also start teaching players to tackle properly rather than simply hitting people with their helmets).
This is interesting, it'll probably be some time before it's put to productive use. They'll need to determine ranges for critical values which have to be correlated with clinical data.
The VA is still sticking you with needles...........Im supposed to do a TBI soon. Be nice if they just draw some blood