Too many athletes suffer from asthma of effort… without even realising it

[3 October 2007 - 14h40]
[mis à jour le 3 October 2007 à 15h55]

According to an American study, around a third of young athletes who complain of breathing problems may in fact be suffering from asthma of effort. The researchers point out that the majority of those they studied had no history of asthmatic disease.

Asthma of effort manifests itself in breathlessness, coughing and wheezing… but only after exercise – in fact between 5 and 15 minutes later. And this is when a sometimes dramatic attack can occur. In the United States, between 1993 and 2000, no fewer than 61 sportspeople died following physical exercise.

Professor Jonathan Parsons of the Ohio State University Medical Center studied the respiratory health of 107 high level sportspeople. It emerged that around four out of ten of them showed signs of asthma of effort. And only 10% of them had already suffered from asthma in childhood. A result that shows “the high proportion of athletes in whom the disease has not been diagnosed”, he states.

According to Professor Parsons, the fact that such a high number of athletes are unaware of their condition is due mainly to the low use of reliable diagnostic testing. “We should use voluntary eucapnic hyperpnea for every individual who embarks on a career in sport ”, Professor Parsons states. This is, it should be pointed out, the reference test chosen by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Source : Ohio State University, September 2007 – Asthma of effort: diagnosis and care, J.W. Fitting Centre hospitalier universitaire Vaudois, 2005

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