🚀 go-pugleaf

As an orienteer myself I have been following this story about the 
mysterious deaths in Sweden. I know most of what has been found so far
but the truth is that one elite and six other young orienteers died of
heart attacks which they got either while training or just after it. They
all seem to have trained when having some sort of an infection !! A young
field&track runner has also died recently the same way and one of the
skaters of the Swedish national team had some chest pains which were also
connected to these earlier cases. Fortunately he is still living with no
danger anymore.

The result of these death cases which in fact took place starting three
years ago (and were discovered earlier this year as having something in
common) is that the national orienteering, ski-orienteering and skating
national squads in Sweden have been recommended to take a break and see
the doctor before more training. Also the Danish, Norwegian and Finnish
national orienteering teams have been given the same recommendation because
the TWAR (a micro-organism, not a virus or bacteria!) has been detected in
one of the death cases and is suspected to have caused the others too.

Some other reasons for the heart attack have also been presented but they
seem to think the TWAR is their best bet?!? 

TWAR is one of the reasons for all of us to get the flu. When tested in
Sweden more than 65% of a group of common blood donators were fould to have
the counter agent of TWAR in their blood which shows that they sometime
before have had the TWAR. 

Usually the TWAR has only very mild effects on a person. One get maybe
sore throat, a little fever, aching in your body etc.  Only in some 
special circumstances it can cause the heart muscle inflammation which
can cause the death. So there really is nothing new to this TWAR!!

WE JUST HAVE TO BE CLEVER ENOUGH NOT TO TRAIN WHEN WE ARE ILL !!

But this is what we all knew before!

-- 
Tapio Leino
Technical Research Centre of Finland / Laboratory of Structural Engineering
mail: VTT/Rakennetekniikan laboratorio, P.O. Box 26, SF-02151 ESPOO, Finland
tel: -358-0-456 6683, telefax: -358-0-456 7003    e-mail: Tapio.Leino@vtt.fi