Taking part

We aim to recruit civilian patients with mTBI for this research. If you have visited an NHS service and had mTBI confirmed within the last 3 months, and are aged between 18 and 60, you may be eligible to join the study.

If you agree you will also be invited to join one of two substudies nested within our main programme:

• Case-Control. We aim to recruit 100 mTBI patients to take part in our case-control study, where you will attend one extra hospital visit and one extra brain scan 6 months after your injury. You can read more about the Case-Control nested substudy here [insert mTBI case-control PIS].
• Biological Variability. We aim to recruit 40 mTBI patients to attend an additional 3 hospital or 3 brain scan visits. You can read more about the Biological Variability nested substudy here [insert mTBI BVS PIS].

The mTBI-Predict study is jointly driven by the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM) and we intend to recruit military personnel with mTBI in addition to patients from the civilian setting.

If you agree to take part in the study, you will be recruited at one of three points after your injury:

• Within 7 days of your injury
• Within 21 days of your injury
• Within 3 months of your injury

Depending on at which point after your injury you enter the study you will attend the hospital between 1 and 3 times where our researchers will perform various investigations to assess your vision, balance, and brain health. We will also collect a small amount of blood, hair, saliva and tears. We will also ask to collect some information on your mental health. You will also be asked to complete some short questionnaires about your health and complete some short tests on an app and movement data on a smartwatch which you will only need to wear when we are collecting our data.

If you agree you will also be invited to join one of two substudies nested within our main programme:

• Case-Control. We aim to recruit 100 mTBI patients to take part in our case-control study, where you will attend one extra hospital visit and one extra brain scan 6 months after your injury. You can read more about the Case-Control nested substudy here [insert mTBI military case-control PIS].
• Biological Variability. We aim to recruit 40 mTBI patients to attend an additional 3 hospital or brain scan visits. You can read more about the Biological Variability nested substudy here [insert mTBI military BVS PIS].

If you are aged between 18 and 60 and have not suffered from a confirmed mTBI in the last 3 months, you may be eligible to join the study as a healthy control participant.

As a healthy control participant you will offer important data to us as we can compare your results with results from patients with mTBI.

Healthy control participants can join the study in two ways:

• Biological Variability. If you agree to this, we will invite you to attend the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham on 4 occasions within a 12-day period. Here, we will take a small sample of your blood, hair, saliva and tears before our researchers examine your vision, balance and brain health. Each visit will last around a day. A day or so before your first visit one of our researchers will arrange a remote interview with you where they will collect information about your physical and mental health, and some other simple questions about you. You can read more about the Biological Variability study here [insert healthy BVS PIS]
• Case-Control. If you agree to this, we will invite you to attend the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham once. Here, we will take a small sample of your blood, hair, saliva and tears before our researchers examine your vision, balance and brain health. Each visit will last around a day. A day or so before your first visit one of our researchers will arrange a remote interview with you where they will collect information about your physical and mental health, and some other simple questions about you. You will also be asked to complete some simple tests on a remote app and we will collect some movement data on a smartwatch that we will provide and you can keep after you complete the study. We will also invite you to attend a brain imaging day at one of our centres (based at the University of Birmingham, University of Nottingham, or Aston University) where our researchers will perform some scans on your brain including an MRI. You can read more about the Case-Control study here [insert healthy case control PIS]

As a thank you for your time, we will pay you £150 for each day you attend.