in other news (connected to Arsenal)
Freddie Ljungberg allergic to his own tattooBillboard hunk Freddie Ljungberg has got a panther by the tail.
The Calvin Klein model and Brit soccer star has been diagnosed as being allergic to the two panther tattoos on his back and tummy.
Ljungberg said that a persistent hip injury that wouldn't heal led his doctors to test him for cancer and AIDS.
"I was frightened," the 28-year-old star told London's Evening Standard. "Nobody seemed to know what was wrong with me."
Finally, after an "agonizing" two-week wait, the hip lesion was diagnosed as a rare allergic reaction to the colored inks in Ljungberg's panther tattoos, artworks that he has often bared while modeling underwear in magazine ads.
It caused the lymph gland in his hip to become inflamed and press on a nerve in his side, the Standard reported.
Surgeons removed the inflamed gland and Ljungberg said he is feeling fine again.
Ljungberg's problem was very rare. A more usual complication of tattoos is hepatitis infections.
A 2001 study by researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas found that people who had received a tattoo were nine times more likely to be infected with hepatitis C, a potentially fatal liver disease, than those who had not been tattooed.
(source:
NY Daily News)