In the Vancouver Sun yesterday there was an article about Football players becoming plagued with superbugs. The superbugs entered the body through microscopic cuts caused by body shaving. I am thinking of becoming a hairy bastard. Did anyone else read this article? It was not a local story.
I bet the requirement for transmission was bodily contact. Therefore I propose we ban group hugs after races…whatcha think? 
Uh, What are superbugs? Did they invade these clean shaven lads to devour them or was it more sinister? 
Like the influenza. They are viruses that seem to linger in the body and the body has little defence against them.
Do you have a link to the article?
dan
The eletronic atriale is by subscription only. But here is it is noting the source so there is no copyright infringement:
—> Shaving led to superbug for athletes VANITY I Football players infected through cuts in genital area, chest, arms and legs
Tom Spears Ottawa Citizen
November 6, 2004
 
OTTAWA – Drug-resistant “superbugs” are infecting U.S. football players at every level and a doctor has traced a major route for the infections: Cosmetic body shaving.
Players from high school to the professional leagues are developing infections through microscopic razor nicks after shaving their chests, arms, legs, and especially groins and genitals, Dr. Elizabeth Begier reports in the medical journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases. Artificial turf burns also let in the bacteria.
The infections spread from player to player by body contact. Some players have needed weeks of intravenous drug therapy to clear up the life-threatening Staphylococcus A infections.
There were several outbreaks of drug-resistant infections among football players in the 2003 season, so Begier, who works for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, went hunting for the cause.
Her team checked out 100 players on a Connecticut college team – its identity is a secret – and found 10 of them were infected. Two had to be hospitalized.
Staph A infections can begin with skin infections, but can spread through the body and cause inflammation and painful, liquid-filled abscesses. The drug-resistant form of the bug is often found in hospitals, but also attacks healthy people, often through breaks in the skin.
Colin Robinson, trainer with the Western Hockey League Vancouver Giants, said infections and disease control is crucial in the locker-room. Everything is washed in hot water, towels are always bleached and he uses a bacteria-killing spray on all equipment.
“And anytime a player has a cut anywhere, we clean it twice a day. Before practice we wrap and clean it and after practice we use peroxide, alcohol and anti-bacteria ointments.”
The players on the Connecticut college team were asking for trouble. They shared towels. They shared a whirlpool bath that wasn’t disinfected well enough. And there was no soap in the showers. But most telling of all, a quarter of the team shaved their bodies – not to improve their performance, but because they liked the look.
Most of the infected players (seven out of 10) came from the body-shaving minority, Begier found. Twelve of the team’s 100 players shaved their chests; seven shaved the groin; six their arms; two their legs; two their abdomen. Two shaved ankles. Some shaved two or more different sites.
“Players who reported body shaving were 6.1 times more likely to develop MRSA infections,” Beiger wrote. “Shaving genitals or the groin was associated with a higher infection risk than shaving other body sites.”
While their groins were covered during practice, the young men are believed to have picked up bacteria on their hands and arms and transferred it to the groin area later.
UNEXPECTED DANGERS IN THE LOCKER-ROOM
Risk factors for the spread of life-threatening Staphylococcus A infection on an unidentified U.S. college football team that was studied:
Sharing towels
Sharing whirlpool bath
Showering without soap
Shaving bodies for cosmetic reasons
Ran with fact box “UNEXPECTED DANGERS IN THE LOCKER-ROOM”, which has been appended to the end of the story. © The Vancouver Sun 2004
my dad told me about this today, i told him it was ok b/c i am waxing now…and i thought it was a joke when he told me…but this is kind of creepy…
anyone know if it’s contained to sports like football where close body contact comes into effect…the setiment that i got from my dad (a physician) was that as a triathlete, you are no more likely to get it than you are as a member of the general public…
Superbugs are normal bugs which have built up resistance to antibiotics, therefore if you get infected they’re a LOT harder to kill off.
Staph Aureus is a fairly common bacterium found on the skin, when it becomes resistant to Methicillins (a type of antibacterial), it is said to be Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus…MRSA. It’s not a virus, it’s not influenza. It’s a reltively common bug that gets out of hand when in the wrong places.
The superbugs entered the body through microscopic cuts caused by body shaving.<<
If shaving is the culprit, why don’t women across America (and other countries) have these same superbugs???
clm
"If shaving is the culprit, why don’t women across America (and other countries) have these same superbugs??? "
Wonder if it has something to do with hygene. Women might be a bit better at this than football jocks who after nicking themselves go and play on muddy football fields.
Looks like manly hairy chests will soon be coming back in style.
There is a combination of things going on. One is people taking antibiotics only until they are feeling better and not completing taking the perscription as perscribed. In the early '70s when I was taking microbiology (didn’t have the GPA to get into the program so I went into engineering instead) this was something we found happening in hospitals where the staff had access to perscription antibiotics and would self medicate. Talk about creating superbug vectors in the worst possible place!!!
The close contact in sports and sharing of disease sources (vectors) accelerates the spread.
Third is our demand for antibiotics everytime we get the sniffles. More then half the time it is a virus and antibiotics aren’t worth a shit.
Our body actually start building a resistance to antibiotics (they are a foreign body) reducing their affectiveness, and last, the most effective resistance to the superbug is our own immune system.
Jay
they have an article of this in the latest issue of men’s health…
pretty scary stuff