Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein

The ACL is the ligament you hear about tearing and talking all the time.

Yeah.

So we're going to be able to actually measure how much strain there is on the ACL.

Does it strain more when estrogen or relaxin are higher?

Does it strain more with fatigue?

Is there a relationship between fatigue and hormones?

But every other study that has tried to look at this kind of looks at, say, oh, these women tore their ACL and we asked them what part of their cycle they were in.

Right.

They weren't measuring it.

Yeah.

I mean, it's hard to capture because people have these injuries randomly.

And it's not like you took a blood test on them that morning or something.

And so this is, I think, an amazing study design that's going to answer a lot of questions that people have been asking but not been able to get to the bottom of.

Well, you apply round after round and, you know, you have to get scored typically in the top 8 percent, you know, in order to get funded.

And then sometimes there's delay in funding and things like that.

But I mean, these studies cost millions of dollars, a few million, really.

And they but this study in particular, I feel it could really change everything.

could be a very meaningful study.

So if we find that there is this relationship that may impact training or maybe timing of games or events, things like that, that might put women more at risk for ACL injury.

And there's this other body of literature which looks at oral contraceptive pills and risk of ACL injury.