Morpho-functional features of young athletes

Objective: to study the morphological and functional features of young athletes. Materials and methods: The study involved 102 young athletes aged 12 to 17. The control (0) group included 28 schoolchildren who were not involved in professional sport. The study group (1) included 35 children from a youth sport swimming school. The study group (2) included 47 young field hockey players. The study group (3) included 20 young athletes from the Republican Specialized Children and Youth Sports School of the Olympic Fencing Reserve of the Republic of Tatarstan. The examination of the children involved: anamnestic data, a survey, a general clinical examination, a blood pressure measurement, dynamometry, anthropometry (measurement of weight and height with body mass index calculation), body composition analysis with a TANITA analyzer. All the young athletes were examined by specialists: a cardiologist, a neurologist, a surgeon, an orthopedist, an ophthalmologist, an otorhinolaryngologist and a dentist. The laboratory and instrumental tests included: a clinical blood test, a general urine test, a resting ECG and a cardiac stress test, an echocardiogram, a respiratory function test, an ultrasound abdominal cavity and pelvic organs test. Results: the young athletes demonstrated higher physical development parameters than the average values in the control group. The percentage of the body fat in the boys and girls in the control group is significantly higher than that in the young athletes. At the same time, the muscle mass in boys not involved in sports is lower than the that in the groups of athletes. Findings: The study, the screening and the retrospective analysis revealed significant differences in the characteristics of the studied groups of children and adolescents, as well as the presence of individual conditions associated with sports

Carnitine exchange in the assessment of tissue energetics and physical performance of young athletes

Objective: to develop prognostic criteria for assessing the physical performance of children engaged in different sports, using the features of carnitine metabolism. Materials and methods: 94 young athletes and 37 students as a control group were included to the study. Indicators such as free and bound carnitine, maximum oxygen consumption (MOC) (as an indicator of physical performance), and the body composition were studied. Results: statistical analysis of the data indicated that the average amount of total carnitine in the group of children engaged in field hockey was lower (45.9±1.6 µmol/l) comparing with the group of representatives of cyclic sports (52.6±1.1 µmol/l) and with the group of control (46.3±1.0 µmol/l). The study of the level of MOC in the abovementioned groups revealed statistically significant differences. Thus, among the field hockey players the average level of absolute MOC was 2.2±0.1 lpm, swimmers – 3.8±0.2 lpm, in the control group – 2.7±0.1 lpm. The study showed significant positive correlation between the level of absolute MOC with total and free carnitine. The data obtained may indicate a greater aerobic performance in athletes with a higher content of free carnitine. Conclusions: thus, after studying the state of carnitine metabolism and maximum oxygen consumption, it becomes possible to predict the state of physical performance of children, which determines the measures to prevent health problems during intense physical activity

The rationality of using DNA diagnostics in sports cardiology

NGS is becoming an integral part of medical practice, including in cardiology. The role of genes in the formation of diseases of the cardiovascular system has been actively studied for the last 20 years. Currently, heart diseases with a hereditary component are usually divided into two large groups: monogenic syndromes that lead to an unfavorable outcome, including sudden cardiac death at a young age, and polygenic conditions that manifest after 35 years and are accompanied by deterioration in the quality of life. In professional sports, changes in the myocardium are almost inevitable, however, the first phenotypic signs of hereditary myocardial disease may be hidden behind adaptive changes, which are commonly called “athlete’s heart”. The carriage of causative genes radically changes the approach to the management of an athlete: his admission to training and competitive activities is reviewed, the volume of permissible load and the frequency of visits to a cardiologist are discussed. In this paper, we tried to identify clinical markers — «red flags» that would indicate the need for genetic testing on the example of athletes who underwent an in-depth medical examination in 2021–2022

Features of carnitine metabolism in young athletes

Objective: to study the indicators of carnitine metabolism in young athletes of various specializations.Materials and methods: This study involved 46 people with different levels of physical activity aged 15 to 18 years. The first group consisted of 18 girls professionally involved in field hockey (mean age, 16.17 ± 0.31 years). The second group included 21 swimmers (10 girls and 11 boys, mean age 17.00 ± 0.26 years). The control group included 7 young men with a standard mode of motor activity, not involved in sports (the age of the subjects was 16 years). In the course of the study, the method of liquid tandem chromatography-mass spectrometry with ionization in an electrospray was used. The material for research is capillary blood. As a result of the analysis of the material, the concentrations of bound carnitine (acylcarnitines) and free carnitine were determined in µmol/l.Results: Comparative blood analysis between the three groups showed differences in free carnitine levels. It was shown that the concentration of free carnitine in the blood plasma of field hockey athletes was significantly lower than in the groups of swimmers and non-athletes (p < 0.001). At the same time, the values of indicators of bound carnitine did not differ significantly between all subjects. We also studied that the values of the carnitine coefficient were significantly higher in the group of hockey players compared to other groups (p < 0.001).Conclusion: The decrease in free carnitine levels in the group of hockey players is probably the result of long-term adaptation of the body to conditions in which glucose is the main energy substrate for working muscles. Further studies are needed to clarify the exact mechanisms of development of this phenomenon

Special approach to the analysis and evaluation of the composition of red blood in athletes (on the example of rowing and canoeing)

The results of the analysis of red blood parameters in professional rowers showed that they have different mechanisms for the development of pre- and anemic conditions. This makes it necessary in each specific case to determine the prevailing of them, which requires an expansion of the set of recorded parameters

Analysis of the effectiveness of countering doping in sports in the framework of medical and biological support for athletes of national teams

Objective: analysis of the effectiveness of combating doping in sports in the process of medical and biological support of athletes forming the national teams of the Russian Federation, and determining its ways.Materials and methods: based on the reports of anti-doping organizations for 2017–2022, sociological studies of the prevalence of doping in sports and therapeutic use structures, a retrospective analysis of the dynamics of the main indicators reflecting the directions of various doping encounters was carried out.Results: a significant discrepancy was revealed between the assessment of the prevalence of anti-doping rule violations based on the results of sociological surveys and the results of laboratory anti-doping studies.A significant positive dynamic of approval of therapeutic use exemptions, which allowed doubling the share of positive decisions of anti-doping organizations is shown.The main directions of improving anti-doping work in the process of carrying out medical and biological support measures are determined

β2-agonists in sports: prevalence and impact on athletic performance

Respiratory disorders caused by exercise are expressed in the development of exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (EIB) and exercise-induced asthma (EIA), which are observed in athletes, especially in cyclic sports, much more often than in the population. Ventilation impairments are exacerbated by inhaled allergens, industrial pollutants and adverse environmental conditions, which increase the risk of EIB and asthma symptoms in athletes. The use of β2-agonists can prevent or eliminate ventilation disorders, however, it requires taking into account current anti-doping rules, which allow the use of certain substances in sports without a request for therapeutic use. The studies of the influence of β2-agonists on functional indicators of athletes and sports performance do not allow to make an unambiguous conclusion about its results. Medications with β2-agonists, approved for use in sports in the form of inhalation, do not have a significant effect on the performance of athletes at major sports competitions. At the same time, the systemic use of these substances and the use of any form of terbutaline caused a positive dynamics in functional indicators, which could lead to an illegal increase in the effectiveness of sports performance. Most of the conclusions about the effect of β2-agonists on outcome are based on a small number of studies, their heterogeneity, and an insignificant number of observations. It is necessary to continue studying the effects of β2-agonists in the course of randomized clinical trials in order to individualize therapy and prevent bronchial obstruction in athlete

Approaches to the classification of sports disciplines, taking into account their influence on the biochemical profile of an athlete

There are many classifications of sports disciplines, which base on various approaches, which separately take into account the patterns of training activity, physiology, the risk of collision and injury, etc. In our opinion, it most fully reflects the specifics of sports changes that occur in the body of athletes under the influence of intense physical activity, at the level of biochemical processes. The classification of sports disciplines proposed by us takes into account the influence of the nature of the training process, the specifics of sports loads, the leading type of energy supply of sports work on the biochemical profile of an athlete, which makes it possible to identify the key features that occur in the body of an athlete under the influence of a specific load

Modern (rational) methods for detecting genetic features of athletes

Molecular genetic methods are an integral part of recent medicine. Polymerase chain reaction, Sanger sequencing, next-generation sequencing are widely used in many areas: diagnostics of infectious, inherited, oncological diseases, prenatal screening, study of polymorphisms that increase the risk of developing multifactorial diseases or promoting development physical qualities necessary to achieve success in sports and competitive activity. The growing demand for genotyping raises a number of ethical and social issues affecting the degree of usefulness of genotyping a healthy person and the scientific reliability of the data obtained using direct-to-consumer genetic testing.The review presents and systematizes the laboratory diagnostic methods used today to study nucleic acids that carry important information about human health and physical qualities

Features of compiling metabolic correction programs for professional athletes and the possibility of their optimization using digital technologies

To compile a personalized program for correcting the metabolism of a professional athlete, it is necessary to take into account many factors, including age, gender, sports specialization, individual characteristics, the pathologies in the anamnesis, the stage of the athlete’s training cycle, etc. When drawing up such programs for athletes of sports national teams of the Russian Federation, a scheme for assessing the characteristics of the athlete’s body is used, the basis for which is information obtained during in-depth medical examinations of athletes conducted on the basis of clinics of the FMBA Russia. To improve the quality of personalized programs of metabolic correction in the future, it is possible to use professionally oriented reference intervals of laboratory blood parameters, as well as the results of genetic screening based on the strategy of complete exomic sequencing of the athlete’s genome. One of the ways to increase the efficiency of metabolic correction of professional athletes is the introduction of modern information technologies and the development of a modern information system based on them. The introduction of such an information system will increase the speed of primary processing of initial information about the health status of the athlete and the peculiarities of his metabolic processes, as well as partially automate the formation of individualized recommendations regarding the diet and hydratation, and the choice of metabolic correction at various stages of the sports season