Artikel
Vitamin D and non-contact injuries in a youth football academy of a professional football club: a retrospective one-year analysis
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Veröffentlicht: | 22. Oktober 2019 |
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Gliederung
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Objectives: Injuries in competitive sports often lead to prolonged disability and have immense competitive as well as socio-economic significance for both the injured athletes and the clubs. Concepts of prevention have therefore been a focus of sports medicine research for years. Vitamin D has a significant impact on the performance of an athlete. Vitamin D deficiency frequently occurs in professional athletes and can lead to stress fractures, frequent muscle injuries, delayed muscle recovery and diminished athletic perfomance.
In the present study, vitamin d levels of young professional football players were documented and the incidence of non-contact injuries in relation to the vitamin D levels was analyzed.
Methods: As part of the 2017/2018 pre-competition assessment vitamin D levels of 114 male youth football players in the under-12 to under-19 teams of a youth academy were recorded by blood sampling. The injuries of players, which were already part of the club in the season 2016/2017, were retrospectively analyzed and systematically related with the vitamin D levels.
Results and conclusion: 76.3 % of the players showed an insufficient vitamin D level (< 30 ng/ml). Players with insufficient vitamin D levels were significantly younger than athletes with sufficient vitamin D levels. 59 players suffered a total of 89 injuries (incidence of 0.78 injuries per player per season). There were 44 non-contact and 45 contact injuries with a total disability of 4215 days. 48 injuries (53.93 %) resulted in a disability of more than four weeks. 19.54 % of the players with insufficient vitamin D levels sustained non-contact muscle injuries with a total disability of 590 days, whereas 25.93 % of players with adequate vitamin D levels showed a total disability of 381 days with muscle injury. In the vitamin D deficient group 9 athletes with apophysitis were missing 821 days and 5 players had to pause 389 days with the diagnosis of an atraumatic bone marrow edema, whereas none of the injuries occurred in the group of players with sufficient vitamin D levels.
Taken together we could show that vitamin D insufficiency is widespread in youth academy football and very often associated with non-contact injuries. Further randomized prospective studies are necessary to shed light on the importance of vitamin D for the occurrence of injuries in youth competitive sports.