Virus Passed Through Football Game

Oct. 26, 2000 -- College football players sick with food poisoning passed the

virus to the opposing team on the field in the first documented

case of its kind in sports, researchers say.

The Duke University teammates vomited in the locker room and onthe sidelines during the Sept. 19, 1998, game against Florida Stateafter getting sick on a turkey lunch. Duke lost 62-13, but notbefore the virus crossed the line of scrimmage.

“The only contact between the two teams was on the playingfield,” said Dr. Christine Moe, an assistant professor ofepidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.“The virus was passed by people touching each other’s contaminatedhands, uniforms and maybe even the football itself.”

Game films showed ill Duke players with vomit on their jerseyscolliding with opponents, and Duke players wiping their mouthpieceson their hands, then touching opponents’ faces and later shakingtheir hands.

Transmission Through Sports

In a study in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, theresearchers urged coaches to bench players with such illnesses andstress the importance of handwashing when ill and after using thebathroom.

The food and waterborne virus — which is from a family calledNorwalk-like viruses because the first outbreak was detected at aNorwalk, Ohio, school in the late 1960s — causes vomiting, stomachcramps and diarrhea.

The virus family causes an estimated 96 percent of cases ofnonbacterial gastroenteritis, or inflammation of the stomach andintestines. It gets far less attention than food-borne bacteriasuch as E. coli because it causes no permanent damage and rarelykills.

Person-to-person transmission sometimes occurs in crowded livingsituations, such as on cruise ships. But this is the firstdocumented case of transmission among participants in a sportsevent, according to Karen Becker, an epidemiologist at the Centersfor Disease Control and Prevention who led the study.

Many Duke players and staff fell ill by game time, a day afterthey ate contaminated turkey sandwiches in a box lunch, Beckersaid.

“By the middle of the second quarter, several players,including three of the defensive starters, were on IVs in thelocker room,” Becker said.

Altogether, 43 of the Duke players and staff who ate the turkey,or 62 percent, got sick. They transmitted it to 11 other Dukepersonnel who had not eaten the sandwiches and to 11 Florida Stateplayers but no staffers.

A Hardy Virus

“It emphasizes the infectious nature of the organism,” Beckersaid.

The virus is hardy enough to survive on unbleached surfaces andcarpet for months, Dr. Mary K. Estes, a professor of molecularvirology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine. She isdeveloping a vaccine and hopes to have it ready in five years.

All 11 Florida State players who got sick were on offense—anindication of how much Florida State dominated the game against theweakened Duke team.

DNA testing enabled the researchers to determine that players onthe two teams had the same rare virus strain, proving the FloridaState athletes could only have been infected on the field. Theresearchers also traced the virus to a particular food preparer.