Cities with Super Bowl teams have higher flu death rates, study says - CNET

Cities with teams in the Super Bowl, like this year's Boulder, Colorado and Charlotte, North Carolina, are associated with a lot of things. A run on blue cheese dip and body paint comes to mind.

Now researchers say that the home cities of the teams competing for football's greatest title are associated with something else -- deaths caused by the flu.

Researchers from Tulane and Coell universities examined flu records from 1974-2009. They found that if a county had a local team in the Super Bowl, there was, on average, an 18 percent increase in deaths from the flu in people over 65 years old.

It's important to realize that this study shows higher flu mortality in cities from where the Super Bowl teams hail, not where the game is actually played. On Sunday, the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos will face off in Santa Clara, Califoia, for Super Bowl 50.

The researchers found no increase in flu symptoms in Super Bowl host cities, which Charles Stoecker of Tulane University School of Public Health, says is likely because the Super Bowl is normally held in warm climates where the incidence flu outbreaks is less. Stoecker is the lead author of a study published in the American Joual of Health Economics covering this topic.