Asthma, rhinitis, other respiratory diseasesAsthma in United States Olympic athletes who participated in the 1998 Olympic Winter Games☆
Section snippets
Methods
All athletes who represented the United States at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano were required to complete a medical history questionnaire that was designed by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) Sports Medicine Division; this was the same questionnaire that was used in our previous study at the 1996 Atlanta Games.2 Briefly, questionnaires were given to the athletes by USOC medical staff at team processing in Nagano within 2 weeks before participation in the Winter Games. Athletes
Results
One hundred ninety-six athletes represented the United States in Nagano, and all completed the questionnaire. Responses to the questions that asked about allergic and respiratory disease are presented in Table I. Almost 22% of the athletes had been told that they had asthma (question 5). About 16% (32/196) of the athletes listed having taken a medication specifically for asthma at some time (question 13). When we combined all questions on the questionnaire that asked athletes to list
Discussion
This study demonstrates that 44 (22.4%) of the 196 US athletes who participated in the Nagano Winter Games in 1998 had a history of asthma, took asthma medications, or both (Table I, Table II) compared with 117 (16.7%) of the 699 athletes who participated in the Atlanta Summer Games in 1996.2 On the medical history questionnaire, athletes were asked the following: “Have you ever been told that you have (had) asthma or exercise-induced asthma?”; 15.3% and 21.9% recorded positive responses in
Acknowledgements
We thank Elizabeth Lawler for her assistance in the completion of this manuscript.
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2016, International ImmunopharmacologyCitation Excerpt :These findings reflect reports in humans that showed exercise improved cardiorespiratory fitness in individuals with asthma [204], and that individuals who trained at moderate intensity were more likely to demonstrate improvements in their asthma symptoms than those who exercised at a low intensity [205–210]. Based upon these data, it seems reasonable to suggest that athletes would have a lower incidence of asthma compared to the general public; however, in reality, the opposite may be true [211–214]. While there could be several factors to explain this, strenuous exercise increases the levels of T helper 2 (Th2) cytokines [215–218] along with other factors that also impact airway remodeling.
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Reprint requests: John M. Weiler, MD, T307 GH, 200 Hawkins Dr, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242.