Heart study confirms return to sports safe for athletes

There are few cases of inflammatory heart disease among professional athletes who suffer mild cases of COVID-19, according to a study authored by medical experts from Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and other major North American sports leagues.

Medical personnel from MLB and the NBA, along with the National Football League, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer and the Women's National Basketball Association, pooled data from athletes from May through October 2020, as professional sports in North America slowly returned to action after coronavirus-linked lockdowns.

The retrospective study, the first of its kind among the six leagues and published by JAMA Cardiology on Thursday, showed that five of 789 athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 during that time were found to have inflammatory heart disease after mandatory “return-to-play” cardiac testing.

“It does show that in this population of athletes, it's safe to return, and that inflammatory heart disease is relatively uncommon,” said Dr. Gary Green, medical director for MLB, who confirmed that all were able to return to play.

None of the people in the study were hospitalized due to COVID-19 infection and none would have been classified as “seriously ill,” Green told Reuters.