Gymnast takes superbug fight personally

Brown University gymnast Tori Kinamon required eight surgeries in her left leg to recover from MRSA. A sophomore, she is researching the so-called
Brown University gymnast Tori Kinamon required eight surgeries in her left leg to recover from MRSA. A sophomore, she is researching the so-called "superbug" colonization in athletes as part of her studies.

PROVIDENCE – When a bout with MRSA nearly cost her life in 2014, Brown University gymnast Tori Kinamon developed a powerful desire to help defeat the so-called “superbug.”

Kinamon, now a sophomore, required eight surgeries in her left leg to recover from the infection. Standing on crutches at the window of her Rhode Island Hospital room during her recovery, she saw the Sciences Library standing above College Hill and felt as though she was living a nightmare.

“I remember looking out and seeing the Sci Li across the way and the reality of my experience really hit me at that moment,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘That’s where I should be right now. I should be in the Sci Li studying or just be on Brown’s campus and instead I’m here.’ That was a really hard reality to face.”

The operations reduced the muscle in Kinamon’s leg and left a 2-foot scar, but one year later she was back competing for Brown on the uneven bars. She was also on the road to doing research directly related to the staph strain that had nearly killed her, under the guidance of Dr. Eleftherios Mylonakis, Dean’s Professor of Medical Science at Brown and chief of infectious diseases at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital.

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Specifically, Kinamon is interested in determining how MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, spreads. While MRSA’s spread in hospitals is well-chronicled, less is known about how it affects healthy people out in the community. And, intriguingly, athletes are at higher risk of suffering MRSA infections, as the New York Giants tight end Daniel Fells recently learned when a MRSA infection ended his season.

“Right now I’m looking at the prevalence of MRSA colonization in athletes to see if it is known, and if it is known, how do we go about decolonizing people to reduce the risk of transmission to others in the community,” she said. “I hope that will extend to some lab work in looking at specifics of the [particularly virulent] community-acquired MRSA strains.”

Mylonakis has called Kinamon “analytical, supremely motivated, meticulous and scientifically curious.”

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