That doesn't seem right to me. It seems like a bug that it is rendered as strikethrough to me, like the regexp that is generated is too greedy. That was a good hint though.
I was able to add + to the border component of the regexp components which seems to have fixed the problem for me for now.
(setq org-emphasis-regexp-components '("- ('\"{" ;pre
"- .,:!?;'\")}\\[" ;post
"\\+
" ;border
"."
1))
John
-----------------------------------
Professor John Kitchin
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803