Influence of physical activity intensity and maturation in injury profile on youth

Abstract

Introduction: Despite the growth in participation of younger generations in physical activity (PA), significant lack of knowledge exists regarding sports injuries [1]. The increased sports involvement from an early age through the years of growth raises serious concerns [1,2]. Therés a general trend toward specialization, intensive training and competition. These factors combined with a growing body can predispose the young child to sports injuries [1,3]. So our aim was to identify the importance of PA intensity and maturity as predictors of injury in youth.

Materials and methods: Information about injury was assessed via a questionnaire (LESADO), PA intensity via accelerometry and maturity via TW III bone age and maturity offset. To perform this evaluation 121 participants aged between 10 and 18 years attending four schools were selected. Logistic regressions analyses were used to determine significant predictors of injury occurrence, injury rate, body area injury location and injury type. All subjects’ guardians gave their written informed consent. The research protocol was in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration and was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Human Kinetics.

Results: There were not found significant results for injury occurrence, injury rate and body area injury location. Only injury type presented significant results. Time spent in moderate PA (χ²(2) = 6.701, p = .035) and bone age (χ²(2) = 7.196, p = .027) were the final predictors. The odds of having a strain or a fracture, relatively to a sprain, increased 1.04 times for each minute of time spent in moderate PA. Likewise the odds of having a strain or a fracture, relatively to a sprain, decreased 1.7 times for year of bone age.

Discussion and conclusions: There were not found meaningful associations between injury occurrence, injury rate and body area injury location and the evaluated predictors. Several studies have already discussed the association between injuries and higher intensity PA [4,5]. However considering the present results and previous studies by Costa e Silva et al. [6,7] PA volume and level of sports participation seem to influence in a more significant way these three variables. Nonotheless PA intensity and bone age proved to be injury predictors of the growing athlete, with expression over injury type.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to João Albuquerque and Carlos Barrigas. We also thank the participant schools, for making their infrastructures available and to all participants for their time and effort. Lara Costa e Silva, Ana Lúcia Silva e João Albuquerque were supported by CIPER and by a scholarship from FCT (SFRH/BD/77408/2011), (SFRH/BD/91029/2012), and (PTDC/DES/113156/2009), respectively.