The functional state of athletes who have undergone coronavirus infection (COVID-19)

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the energy supply of athletes, who had a mild form of coronavirus infection (COVID-19) under cycling ergometric load (CEL) to substantiate the timing of recovery, as well as to determine the volume and intensity of physical activity. Eighty-seven athletes aged from 18 to 28 years old, involved in cyclic sports, were examined. Group I consisted of 52 athletes with COVID-19, and group II consisted of 37 healthy self-isolating athletes. In addition to the comprehensive examination, the tested athletes underwent special examinations: the study of diagnostic material using methods of nucleic acid amplification, spirography and spiroergometry, electrocardiography (ECG), and CEL. The results of athletes from both groups did not differ significantly (p ​> ​0.5) in the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd examinations. The second examination revealed a discrepancy between functional reserves and the load performed, as evidenced by the difference in the recovery rate of most indicators, the results of the third examination in the long-term period (6 months) showed that the athletes of the first group did not have any violations of the parameters of the respiratory function (RF) and cardiovascular system at rest, after performing CEL, as well as in the recovery period. The results suggest that the full resumption of training loads and participation in competitions are possible only with the complete normalization of the functional state of the cardiorespiratory system. The most informative indicators are: minute ventilation (V˙E), heart rate (HR), oxygen pulse (OP), and coefficient of oxygen utilization (COU).

Keywords

Functional state / Coronavirus infection / COVID-19 / Athletes / Cycling ergometric load / Spirography / Spiroergometry

Ethical approval statement

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Decla-ration of Helsinki and approved by the or Ethics Committee of the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation (Sechenov University) (Protocol No. 02-20 of 02/05/2020). Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Victoria Zaborova: Writing - original draft, Supervision, Project administration, Conceptualization. Irina Lazareva: Writing - original draft, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Kira Kryuchkova: Writing - original draft, Investigation. Christina Popova: Writing - re-view & editing, Writing - original draft. Vitaly Rybakov: Writing - re-view & editing, Validation, Methodology. Dmitry Shestakov: Writing -original draft, Resources, Data curation. Valerio Bonavolontá: Writing -review & editing, Writing - original draft. Laura Guidetti: Writing -original draft, Conceptualization. Giovanna Zimatore: Writing - orig-inal draft, Visualization, Methodology.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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