Hidden among the millions of vuvuzela-blowing spectators in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup games may be a surprising number of medical and scientific researchers: The tournament has attracted not merely die-hard fans but people interested in the physics, physiology, psychology, and even epidemiology of the globally beloved sport.
Anyone who is curious about the physical and psychosocial profiles of Mexican soccer referees, the effects of a traditional Islamic sports uniform on the performance of women players, the potential effects of various caffeinated sports drinks on World Cup performance, or the “anthropometric and physiological parameters of Cameroon elite championship soccer players” need have looked no further last week than Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where the second annual World Conference of Science and Soccer took place.
Copyright Axel Buehrmann
Researchers attending the World Cup are using the tournament as a living lab that offers insights on phenomena such as the development of a potential treatment for temporary tinnitus caused by the ubiquitous vuvuzela horn.
Although the science that was presented was diverse and representative of many disciplines, it shared a common goal: improving the game, said conference organizer Richard Stretch, Ph.D., the university’s director of sport. “The focus is in particular on the training for the game and a huge part is preventing injuries,” Dr. Stretch said in an interview. “There are people who complain that the game has gotten too technical; that’s a very dangerous attitude. Technology with a scientific basis allows for improved performance and health.”
Many of the conference’s presenters focused on aspects of the sport that might, to the average fan, seem arcane, yet their findings were not without real-life implications. When one U.K. sportswriter mocked French players this week for allegedly consuming some 120 baguettes per day at their hotel – “Maybe all these carbs are to blame for their stodgy performance against Uruguay?” mused the Telegraph’s Steve Wilson – it was clear that he had not received an advance copy of “Recovery of Muscle Glycogen After a Soccer Match: Effect of a High Carbohydrate Diet” by T.P. Gunnarsson and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen, who concluded that a high-carb diet actually improves performance.
For researchers who are interested in health issues that affect soccer spectators, the World Cup is also providing a living lab.
One team of researchers, led by Dr. Marc Mendelson of the University of Cape Town (South Africa), used 13 years’ worth of surveillance data to predict disease threats to visitors during the World Cup games. In an article published in June, Dr. Mendelson and colleagues determined that “systemic febrile illness [and dermatologic and] acute diarrheal illness” were the most common illnesses among visitors to South Africa, as was spotted fever group rickettsiosis (Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 2010;82:991-5). Malaria was far less common than was believed, the team found, with only six cases documented among travelers. “Advice for the travelers to the 2010 World Cup should be individualized according to these findings,” they concluded.
Meanwhile, two North American epidemiologists, John Brownstein, Ph.D., of Children’s Hospital Boston and Dr. Kamran Khan of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, have combined their respective reporting systems to figure out what’s happening right at this moment, disease-wise, around the World Cup games: HealthMap maps real-time reports of emerging-disease activity, and BIO.DIASPORA uses air transport data to trace disease patterns.
On June 15, their public Web project mapped a measles outbreak in nearby Malawi; meanwhile, another linked map provided current data on rift valley fever outbreaks, conveniently juxtaposed with soccer balls marking proximity to World Cup stadiums.
The World Cup project, Dr. Brownstein said in an interview, “is really about the risks associated with mass gatherings.”
Dr. Brownstein and Dr. Khan teamed up for a similar project during the Vancouver Olympic Games in 2009, and found that it accurately predicted an importation of measles. As with the Olympic project, Dr. Brownstein said, this one will also be followed up to see how predictive the monitoring was.
Dr. Brownstein and Dr. Khan’s system deals only with newly reported disease outbreaks, and thus cannot reflect the ongoing risks associated with, for example, HIV, with which as many as 20% of adult South Africans are infected. Preventing the spread of HIV through sexual contact is a large – perhaps the largest – health concern for the event organizers, the South African government, and foreign governments such as Great Britain, which have donated and are distributing tens of millions of condoms during the games. The epidemiology of HIV and the 2010 World Cup will remain a mystery for some time, although it seems likely that some researcher, somewhere, is working on it already.