Written by Marshall Hughes
You played an outstanding football game last night. You have the scrapes and cuts to prove it. A few days later, you’re at the emergency room with fever and a painful, nasty skin infection. Will you heal in time for next week’s game?
Taking hard licks used to be the major worry among football players. Today, more and more players are faced with the diagnosis of a serious staph infection called Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aurous that it is often difficult to treat and can sideline an athlete for an extended period of time.
NFL players such as Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have experienced interrupted seasons because of this disease. A 2005 survey by the NFL team physicians found that 60 players across the league had been diagnosed with the MRSA infection. The League acknowledges that these numbers are rapidly increasing.
Regular staph infections are easily treated and have been present in locker rooms for years. In recent years, more attention has been devoted to this disease due to the immergence of MRSA, which is resistant to general antibiotics that are used to treat a normal staph case.
“If you go back to the locker room and there are guys sharing towels, sharing whirlpools or sharing weightlifting equipment, there’s a risk of this bacteria commonly found in your skin to then be passed from one individual to another,”said Dr. John Francis of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Doctors are finding that MRSA infections have become increasingly common among high school and college athletes. While the NCAA recognizes the severity of the problem, this entity does not have an outlet for reporting individual cases but encourages these cases to be reported to local and state health departments. The NCAA does have an active campaign for prevention of the disease.
Dr. Randy Lambeth, director of the athletic training program at Harding University, said staph infections occur in almost every sport played at Harding.He stressed the importance that the athletic department places on prevention.
“We spray the weight rooms twice a day,” Lambeth said. “We also separate the laundry of the player who is infected and wash their clothes twice a day. We clean the locker rooms as well as all of the lockers and the equipment in each locker.”
Ronnie Harlow,head athletic trainer at Harding,explained the symptoms of a staph infection.
“The infection begins by looking basically like a pimple,” he said. “It will then turn into more of an abscess or a boil. It can get very swollen. Staph is very contagious – especially with a football team.” When a locker room is shared with about 100 athletes, it is very difficult to keep the bacteria from spreading, he said.
Staph infections, especially MRSA, can be fatal. Casey Russell, a high-school junior football player in Gravette, Ark., died on Sept. 24, 2009, as a result of this disease. The Arkansas Health Department has reported a dramatic increase in this disease especially in participants of competitive sports. The AHD stresses the importance of prevention and states that coaches should be on alert for skin infections and encourage athletes to seek medical treatment.
