Impact of sports participation on cardiovascular health markers of children and adolescents: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular diseases have a high prevalence in adults and their development begins in the first decades of life. On the other hand, sports participation in childhood and adolescence provides benefits which can delay the onset of these diseases. AIM To synthesize the available literature on the impact of sports participation on cardiovascular outcomes in children and adolescents. METHODS This systematic review was conducted on studies of children and adolescents (aged 8-18 years) who regularly practiced a sport and had reported cardiovascular outcomes (blood pressure and intima-media thickness) recorded. The Medline/PubMed, SciELO, Reference Citation Analysis ( ) and Bireme databases were searched. RESULTS In total, 3314 publications for blood pressure and 122 publications for intima-media thickness were identified in the databases. After exclusions ( e.g., duplicate articles, animal studies and those that did not meet the inclusion criteria), four publications for blood pressure (449 adolescents) and two publications for intima-media thickness were included (402 adolescents). For blood pressure, all publications were longitudinal in design (follow-up ranging from 12 wk to 12 mo) and involved adolescents aged from 8 years to 18 years of age. For intima-media thickness, both publications were longitudinal in design and involved adolescents aged from 11 years to 18 years of age. CONCLUSION Sports participation seems to promote benefits to cardiovascular structure and function in adolescents. However, studies with adolescents are scarce and further research is needed to understand this phenomenon.

Public Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Knowledge: Sources, Accuracy and Confidence

“…Regardless, given the recent rise in discussion about CTE among the public, the generally accepted facts about CTE should be more widely discussed with TBI patients and sports athletes to decrease misinformation from spreading. Sports participation has many benefits, including its promotion of cardiovascular health (23), role as a protective factor against anxiety and depression (24), and provision of access to social support; as such, plummeting sports participation due to this misinformation should be of heightened concern. It is recommended that clinicians actively work to dispel myths related to CTE by facilitating this conversation with patients when appropriate ( e.g.…”

Association of Early Sports Practice with Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Community-Dwelling Adults: A Retrospective Epidemiological Study

“…Another possible hypothesis for the inverse association between early sports practice and hypertension is that the practice of sports provides health improvements which can be tracked along the life stages. A recent systematic review reported that sports participation promotes benefits to cardiovascular structure and function in adolescence [ 3 ] . In addition, sports are the most intense physical activities practiced during this life stage [ 1 ], being associated with better physical fitness [ 15 – 18 ], which is an important factor for cardiovascular health and prevention of hypertension [ 45 ].…”

“…Sports practice in childhood and adolescence has been considered a protective factor for a series of cardiovascular risk factors. In fact, a recent meta-analysis [ 3 ] showed that children and adolescents who participate in sports present better cardiovascular structure and function compared to those who do not participate, such as lower blood pressure values and carotid intimal thickness. In addition, original studies have shown that participation in sports is associated with better glucose values [ 4 ] and heart rate variability [ 5 ], dyslipidemias [ 6 , 7 ], and cardiac autonomic modulation [ 8 ].…”

Contribution of youth sport participation to physical activity levels and cardiovascular disease risk factors in 5-year-old to 14-year-old children: a study protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

“…28 Further, a recent systematic review on the impact of youth sport participation on CVD health markers found sport participation to promote benefits to cardiovascular structure and function; however, only six studies met the restrictive inclusion criteria with two studies of intima-media thickness and four of blood pressure. 29 To complicate the lack of clarity in the relationship between youth sport participation and CVD-risk factors, it is unclear whether there are outcome differences between racial and ethnic groups. Studies that highlight race are rare, as the majority of research has been conducted primarily in white participants.…”