Athletes' health suffers later

Athletes may be in top shape but the gruelling physical activity and competition to which they subject themselves increases their risk of suffering bone and joint problems.

Footballers are 10 times more likely to develop osteoarthritis in their hip than other men, and long-distance runners are more prone to low bone mineral density, which can lead to fractures and osteoporosis.

"We suspect it is just the nature of the sport. It is almost analogous to an industrial injury," said Gordon Shepard, an orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Bolton Hospital in Lancashire, northern England.

Shepard and his colleagues studied the rate of osteoarthritis in 68 football managers who had been former players and 136 men who had never played football. Their research is reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

They discovered that nine of the former players suffered from osteoarthritis, even if they have not had a serious hip injury, and six of them had had a total of eight hip replacements between them. But there were only two cases of the illness in the non-footballers.

There were not only more cases of the illness among former footballers, they also had hip replacements in their late 30s and early 40s, which is uncommon at such a young age in a small group of people.

In a separate study in the journal, researchers found that instead of increasing bone mineral density in female athletes, long-distance running lowered it.

By measuring the bone density of 52 women who ran between five and 70km a week, they discovered a link between lower bone density in the spine and hip and running greater distances.

They found that the heavier women in the study, who had more muscle than fat, had a higher bone density, similar to athletes who do weightlifting, gymnastics and volleyball.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: Health