As Justin Fields, the star quarterback at Ohio State, was gathering more than 300,000 electronic signatures to beseech Big Ten university presidents to reverse their decision to postpone football this fall, he was applauded by his coach, Ryan Day, who in turn was being hailed by his athletic director, Gene Smith.

Nobody, though, was cheering on Dr. Curt Daniels.

Daniels, the director of sports cardiology at Ohio State, had also been busy, working to publish a three-month study whose preliminary findings were presented to Pac-12 and Big Ten leaders before they shut down football earlier this month. Daniels said that cardiac M.R.I.s, an expensive and sparingly used tool, revealed an alarmingly high rate of myocarditis — heart inflammation that can lead to cardiac arrest with exertion — among college athletes who had recovered from the coronavirus.

The survey found myocarditis in close to 15 percent of athletes who had the virus, almost all of whom experienced mild or no symptoms, Daniels added, perhaps shedding more light on the uncertainties about the short- and long-term effects the virus may have on athletes.

But as Daniels’s survey awaits the rigors of peer review, it has received scant attention, in part because Ohio State has refused to make public any testing data about its athletes — who make up the bulk of the study — other than to announce last month that it had shut down workouts because of positive virus tests. Thus, Daniels said he could not disclose any more information about the data, including the number of athletes tested and those found with myocarditis, until it is published. (The school has said it is following privacy laws, but those prohibit only the disclosure of personally identifiable information.)

Source: New York Times

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