Groundbreaking research shows LSU athletes made full recovery from covid

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Living with the threat of covid can make anyone’s life tough, but for athletes your season depends on staying healthy.

In 2020, researchers conducted a pioneering study that focused on LSU players and their recovery from covid, to make sure football can go on as planned.

During that time, the CDC recommended people stay 6-feet apart from others, but most athletes can’t be that far away from opponents or other players.

Researchers at LSU and local hospitals looked at blood and saliva in LSU football players to determine how likely athletes would overcome covid symptoms.

“In the first part of the study we had 29 players and we divided those into 15 that had contracted the virus and had to isolate for 10 days, and 14 that remained completely virus free,” said Guillaume Spielmann, the Lead Trauma Researcher at the Our Lady of the Lake Hospital.

James Stampley says as a former athlete, he knows firsthand how physically challenging it can be to train.

From his perspective, making sure players were fully healthy before putting them back on the field would be vital.

“Covid has affected the world in such a pretty drastic way, when it comes to everyday living. When it comes to performance, I believe it’s important to understand that connection and the effect that it will have on our athletes,” James Stampley, a Bioenergetic Doctoral Student at LSU.

During the study, they found that 10 days was in fact enough time for players to recover from the virus, and players were healthy enough to get on the field.

Speilman says their next steps are to continue this research effort and branch out to the public.

“Now we are continuing to collect data and we want to push these findings to old adults, and to potential patients that have contracted covid that may have more severe symptoms,” said Speilman.

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