UPDATE: Myocarditis NOT Present in More Than 30 Percent of Big Ten Athletes Who Tested Positive, as Originally Reported

UPDATE: 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time

It appears Dr. Sebastianelli wasn't quite clear on the information he was sharing, which has led to some significant confusion this afternoon. Penn State has issued a clarification on the initial claims that nearly one third of Big Ten student-athletes that have tested positive for CoVID also have myocarditis. That information was inaccurate.

ORIGINAL STORY: 3:48 p.m. Eastern Time

Information that led to the Big Ten postponing fall sports is slowly starting to become public.

In a State College area school board of directors meeting on Monday night, Penn State’s director of athletic medicine, Wayne Sebastianelli, made an eye-opening statement about Big Ten athletes and myocarditis. 

Sebastianelli stated that in the cardiac MRI scans that were done on positive COVID-19 student-athletes in the Big Ten, a third of the student-athletes appeared to have myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle. 

“When we looked at our COVID-positive athletes, whether they were symptomatic or not, 30 to roughly 35 percent of their heart muscles (are) inflamed,” Sebastianelli said. “We really just don’t know what to do with it right now. It’s still very early in the infection. Some of that has led to the Pac-12 and the Big Ten’s decision to sort of put a hiatus on what’s happening.”

Myocarditis and its long-term effects became public when ESPN reported the conversations that presidents, commissioners, athletic directors, health advisory board members from the Big Ten and other conferences were having about whether to play this fall or not.

“You could have a very high-level athlete who’s got a very superior VO2 max and cardiac output who gets infected with COVID and can drop his or her VO2 max and cardiac output just by 10 percent, and that could make them go from elite status to average status,” stated Sebastianelli. 

“We don’t know that. We don’t know how long that’s going to last. What we have seen is when people have been studied with cardiac MRI scans — symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID infections — is a level of inflammation in cardiac muscle that just is alarming.”

This information comes after documents became public that 11 of the 14 Big Ten presidents voted to postpone fall sports until the spring. Ohio State's president was not one of them.

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