Infection Strikes Varsity Football Team

While the football team has suffered several losses due to behavioral issues this season, the more pressing issues as far as University health officials are concerned have been bacterial.

An antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection known as Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus [MRSA], which has been working its way through the ranks of professional and amateur athletes, found its way into Harvard Stadium this fall.

“I think there’s clear evidence that [MRSA] is on the rise, and particularly worrisome is that it’s on the rise among otherwise healthy populations like children and athletes,” said Professor of Medicine Gerald B. Pier.

In the final week of week of pre-season practice, a handful of varsity football players experienced symptoms of MRSA infection, according to members of the team.

“The first person got kind of like a rash,” said Austin D. McLeod ’09, a linebacker who himself contracted MRSA. “The second person got a rash and some bumps.”

According to McLeod, as the bacteria spread to more players, the symptoms intensified.

“The guy who had it before me got it on his calf and it sort of swelled up. I got it on my foot and it swelled up to the point where I couldn’t walk and I had to be hospitalized for a few days,” he said.

Even teammates who were not infected felt the effects of the disease, as the training staff adjusted to try to curb the outbreak. The smallest abrasions were diligently bandaged and taped, and some post-practice therapies were proscribed, according to John J. Brady ’10.

“We were not allowed to use the whirlpools,” Brady, a lineman said. “No icepacks, no whirlpools.”

Whirlpools or no, few people could claim to be as uncomfortable as McLeod himself, who watched a small spot – “just a bump or a pimple or what-not” – swell to frightening proportions in the space of only a day. Even after intravenous antibiotics and bed-rest had brought the foot back to customary proportions, the affair was far from over.

“I’ve been going through a pretty intense ordeal. The school had me…put into separate housing. They were pretty aggressive with treating [the infection] and making sure that other people didn’t get it,” McLeod said.

Even with the season safely underway, the threat of infection persists according to Pier.

“[Risk] is attributed to close physical contact of the sort you get while playing sports and…sharing things within a locker-room – anything from towels or any type of cloth that might be used to wipe sweat off,” he said.

Pier also did not rule out the notion–advanced by the New England Journal of Medicine in a 2003 study of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams–that artificial turf fields of the sort recently installed in Harvard Stadium could enhance the likelihood of infection.

“If the artificial surfaces are more likely to cause abrasions than [a] natural surface…it probably does contribute to transmission,” he said.

McLeod did specifically state that all the infections occurred “before [the team] even touched the turf field.” And Pier said that, while artificial turf abrasions can provide entry sites for infection, the surface is far from being a harbor for microbes.

“In general MRSA likes to live in and on bodies. It likes moist surfaces like the nose, the throat, the skin. It doesn’t survive all that well on inanimate surfaces like artificial turf or dirt or grass.”