CONSUMPTION OF ANALGESICS BEFORE A MARATHON AND EFFECTS ON INCIDENCE OF ADVERSE EVENTS: THE HANNOVER MARATHON STUDY.

  • Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
  • Institute for Sports Medicine, Hannover Medical School, Hannover Germany.
  • Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, University Hospital Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
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Objectives: Athletes commonly ingest analgesic drugs before competition. Previous studies assume a prevalence of 50%. We examined incidence of analgesics consumption before a marathon and occurrence of adverse events. Methods: The study was designed as a non-interventional cohort study. Data assessment was conducted using a questionnaire before Hannover Marathon 2013. Endpoints were intensity of analgesic consumption and incidence of adverse events in the cohort of analgesic users as compared to analgesics free cohort. Results: 712 questionnaires (out of 1532 participants) were returned and 655 complete. 17% took analgesics prior to the marathon. Used analgesics were evenly distributed between Aspirin, Ibuprofen and Diclofenac. Most athletes wanted to prevent pain (41%) or to treat pain (56%). 3.6% of the participants took aspirin to avoid thromboembolic events. The Analgesic Group had a slightly increased risk of experiencing severe adverse gastrointestinal events, without significant differences between groups. Pain in joints and swollen joints occurred significantly less in often the Analgesics Group (8.1% vs 16.1%). Conclusion: Use of analgesics before a marathon was less common than assumed, and occurrence of unintentional side effects was low. However, more comprehensive studies are necessary to assess the risks of analgesics when used in context of marathon running.

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Alexandra Mahn, Felix Floricke, Lion Sieg, Andre Gerdes, Sanjay Weber-Spickschen, Christian Weber, Arno Kerling and Alexander Hanke. (2018); CONSUMPTION OF ANALGESICS BEFORE A MARATHON AND EFFECTS ON INCIDENCE OF ADVERSE EVENTS: THE HANNOVER MARATHON STUDY., Int. J. of Adv. Res., 6 (01), 1430-1441, ISSN 2320-5407. DOI URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.21474/IJAR01/6369

PD Dr. Alexander A. Hanke
Dept. of Sports Medicine, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany

DOI:

Article DOI: 10.21474/IJAR01/6369      
DOI URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.21474/IJAR01/6369

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