(Vienna, 11 June 2026) With the start of the 2026 World Cup, the spotlight is on an event followed by billions of people worldwide and leading to changes in behavior patterns. Previous studies have shown that major tournaments are associated with increased alcohol consumption, emotional stress and greater use of emergency medical services. A research team at the Medical University of Vienna has now investigated whether these changes can also be detected in routinely collected laboratory values from a large patient population. To this end, more than 560,000 laboratory tests spanning almost two decades were analyzed. The study has recently been published in the journal "Frontiers in Public Health".
The research team led by Marlene Hollenstein and Klaus Schmetterer from the University Clinic for Laboratory Medicine at MedUni Vienna retrospectively analysed 564,316 laboratory tests carried out between 2004 and 2023 at MedUni Vienna, coinciding with 19 European and World Cup tournaments. Laboratory values during the tournament periods were compared with those from the 30 days immediately before and after. The focus was on liver values, which can serve, among other things, as indicators of alcohol-related stress. The study examined the enzymes ALAT and ASAT, which enter the bloodstream in increased quantities when liver cells are damaged, as well as gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), a laboratory parameter that can react to prolonged, elevated alcohol consumption.
"However collectively and intensely major football events may be experienced – they do not show up in the overall dataset of laboratory values," says study leader Marlene Hollenstein regarding the findings. "We did, of course, identify isolated deviations in the relevant laboratory parameters, but these balance each other out in the overall picture of the population." The analysis revealed no clinically relevant differences between tournament and comparison periods. Only minimal deviations were observed in GGT, ALAT and ASAT levels. Inflammation and stress markers such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and white blood cell count also remained largely unchanged.
Additional analyses also failed to paint a different picture. Neither specific time periods such as match days or evening hours, nor different tournament phases such as knockout rounds or matches involving Austrian teams, were associated with consistent changes in the laboratory values examined. Even during UEFA EURO 2008, which took place in Austria and Switzerland, there was no evidence of significant shifts in laboratory values. "Major football tournaments are demonstrably associated with behavioral changes. However, our data show that these effects do not manifest in a clinically significant manner in the routinely collected laboratory values of a large and heterogeneous patient population," said Hollenstein.
Publication: Frontiers in Public Health
Goals, cheers, and gamma-GT: Do football tournaments affect laboratory parameters?
Marlene Hollenstein, Van-Lin Nguyen, Thomas Szekeres and Klaus G. Schmetterer
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1839877
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1839877/full