Athletes

SAN DIEGO — In this video from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting, Henry B. Ellis Jr., MD, discussed how suspension of sport participation due to the COVID-19 pandemic affected youth athletes.

Black college athletes demonstrated less knowledge of concussions than white college athletes, despite NCAA requirements for concussion education among athletes, according to results from a cross-sectional study.

In a study evaluating the cardiac health of young athletes who recovered from COVID-19, researchers found that most did not require additional cardiac testing before resuming activity. It was the top story in cardiology last week.

Athletics in 2020 certainly has not been business as usual. While many game schedules have been condensed, in most cases the amount of time allotted between scheduled competitions has not been altered.

Given the low proportion of collegiate athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 after 10 days of quarantine, a shorter quarantine period may improve adherence without increasing infection risk, according to a study by the CDC and NCAA.

Although this landmark legislation can be broadly applied, it has had the most notable impact on sports programming in public high schools, allowing more female adolescent athletes to experience the positive effects of sports participation. Girls start participating in sports at a later age, and by age 14, drop out of sports at twice the rate of their male counterparts. Girls are thus more vulnerable to poor physical literacy, which is defined as both the ability and drive to be “physically active for life.”

Pretreatment differences in athletic performance for transgender women in the U.S. Air Force vs. cisgender women continue more than 1 year after startingfeminizing therapy, according to findings published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Male athletes who tested positive for androgen use experienced a 26% lower fertility rate in the years before a doping sanction vs. controls, but rates gradually caught up with the general population in the years after testing, data show.

The AAP issued interim guidance to advise pediatricians and parents about the risks and benefits of children returning to athletics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an Italian study of elite and amateur athletes with suspected inherited CVD, researchers demonstrated that the presence of more than three clinical markers was highly indicative of a positive diagnosis from genetic testing for CVD.