{"id":11445,"date":"2025-01-13T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T05:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/?p=11445"},"modified":"2025-01-10T16:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:03:10","slug":"feels-like-temperatures-and-risk-of-injuries-in-athletic-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/2025\/01\/13\/feels-like-temperatures-and-risk-of-injuries-in-athletic-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"Feels-like temperatures and risk of injuries in athletic championships"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog provides an overview of a recently published study on the \u201c<\/a><\/span>Association between feels-like temperatures and injury risk during international outdoor athletic championships: A prospective cohort study on 29,579 athlete starts during 10 championships<\/a>\u201d [1].<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is this study important?<\/h3>\n

Anecdotal field experiences report that when the environmental temperatures are cold, athletes get more injuries than when it is hot. Athletes, coaches and medical staff, try to have this in mind when they are training and competing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, there were few scientific events about this, which does not allow us to argue and support about this potential external environmental risk factor. Experimental animal studies show increased tissue damage (i.e., muscle or tendon) with decreased tissue temperature [2\u20134]. In athletics, lower rates of hamstring injuries were reported when temperatures were above 25\u00b0C, with higher rates when temperatures were between 10-14.9\u00b0C [5]. An improved understanding of the potential association between environmental temperatures and injuries would be of great interest to help the development of injury risk reduction strategies. Such a knowledge is important for both 1) clinical applications and 2) scientific knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

How did the study go about this?<\/h3>\n

This study was a total population study. We used i) injury data routinely collected by medical teams using the same methods during 10 international outdoor athletics championships from 2007 to 2022, ii) feels-like temperatures data using the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) [6] from Di Napoli et al., [7] (who combined the meteorological variables air temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation as provided in the ERA5-HEAT dataset [8], extracted hourly during each championship), and iii) exposure data (i.e., number of athlete starts of each round and event of each championship).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We then performed Poisson regressions with incidence rates (number of injuries per 1,000 athlete starts) as outcomes and UTCI as a predictive variable adjusted for sex, for all and time-loss injuries, for different injured tissue types (i.e., muscle, tendon, ligament, articular, bone, and skin) and specific discipline (i.e., sprints, hurdles, jumps, throws, middle distance, long distance, marathon, and race walking).<\/span><\/p>\n

What did the study find?<\/h3>\n

During 10 international outdoor athletics championships from 2007-2022, a total of 1,203 in-competition injuries were reported for 29,579 athlete starts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The main findings of the present study were that:<\/span><\/p>\n