Peak height velocity in young athletes: A longitudinal meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

The present longitudinal meta-analysis aimed to estimate the growth curves and age at peak height velocity (PHV) in young male athletes, considering anthropometric data from available longitudinal studies. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, studies with repeated measurements in young male athletes were identified from searches across four databases (MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, and SCOPUS). Estimations were based on multilevel polynomial models using a fully Bayesian framework. After a full-text screening of 317 studies meeting the eligibility criteria, 31 studies were considered. Studies were excluded mainly due to study design, repeated reporting, and incomplete reporting of the outcomes. Of the 31 studies analysed, 26 (84%) focused on young European athletes. The average age at PHV for the total sample of studies with young athletes was 13.1 years (90% credible interval: 12.9; 13.4). When considering data by sport, there was substantial variation in the age at PHV estimates (range: 12.4 to 13.5 years). As most studies in the meta-analysis focused on young European football players (52%), predictions for young athletes from other sports may be limited. The age at PHV in the available data occurred earlier than in general paediatric populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth sports
• growth
• maturation
• Bayesian methods
• multilevel modelling

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Data availability material

All data presented in this review are available at https://osf.io/3cywe/.

Code availability

All codes used to extract, model, and plot the data in this review are available at https://osf.io/3cywe/.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2023.2203484.

Trial registration number and date of registration

CRD42020175084 (PROSPERO), 25 March 2020

Additional information

Funding

The first and second authors were supported by grants from the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001.