Reviews and Feature ArticlesExercise in elite summer athletes: Challenges for diagnosis☆,☆☆
Section snippets
Patients
Fifty elite-level athletes, defined as state level or above in their primary sport, were recruited from sports medicine centers and sporting teams throughout Melbourne, Australia. The subjects were unselected for previous respiratory problems. The subjects were asked to attend the laboratory for challenge on 3 occasions, having refrained from both caffeine and exercise on the day of testing. Those taking pulmonary medications were asked to withhold those medications as follows: short-acting
Subjects
All 50 of the athletes recruited (15 male and 35 female patients; median age, 21 years; age range, 16-42 years) completed the questionnaire and each challenge test. Twenty-seven subjects had a previous diagnosis of asthma made by a clinician. Thirteen of the subjects were using prophylactic medications, of which 5 were taking only inhaled corticosteroids on a twice daily basis, 4 were taking only mast cell stabilizers (sodium cromoglycate or nedocromil sodium) before exercise, and 4 were taking
Discussion
This study contained a significant proportion of athletes competing at an international level, thus placing it in an international context. The results of this study in elite summer-sport athletes showed that respiratory symptoms are not highly sensitive for predicting bronchoconstriction to dry air hyperpnea or methacholine. In this group of elite summer-sport athletes, the EVH challenge test determined a prevalence of bronchial hyperresponsiveness (BHR) of 50%, comprising 60% of those who
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The Victorian Asthma Foundation provided funding for the cost of the equipment and consumables. The Foundation was in no way involved in any stage of the research study. The Alfred Postgraduate Research Trust provided a full-time research scholarship for the main researcher and primary author of this article.
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Reprint requests: Karen Holzer, MBBS, FACSM, Department of Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, Alfred Hospital, Prahran VIC 3181, Australia.