“This is the first reported case of an urticarial rash apparently caused by the frustration of watching England play football.”
With these words, written in 1987, a London GP trainee named P Merry alerted readers of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine to a little-suspected risk of rooting for a World Cup team. Rooting can cause emotional upset, which can cause urticaria. Urticaria is also known as “hives”.
Here’s what happened…
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.
NOTE: Due to production gremlins, the final paragraph of the column didn’t make it into print. Here is the missing, concluding passage:
Fandom carries danger, yes, but there’s a special payoff for those whose team does capture the ultimate glory. Or so implies a study that appeared in 2003 in the journal Heart. Written by two French doctors, the title proclaims: “Lower Myocardial Infarction Mortality in French Men the Day France Won the 1998 World Cup of Football.”