Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. Jul 9, 2022; 11(4): 375-384
Published online Jul 9, 2022. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v11.i4.375
Impact of sports participation on cardiovascular health markers of children and adolescents: Systematic review and meta-analysis
Wesley Torres, Santiago Maillane-Vanegas, Jacqueline Bexiga Urban, Romulo Araujo Fernandes
Wesley Torres, Santiago Maillane-Vanegas, Jacqueline Bexiga Urban, Romulo Araujo Fernandes, Department of Physical Education, Sao Paulo State University-UNESP, Presidente Prudente 19060900, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Author contributions: Torres W, Maillane-Vanegas S, Urban JB and Fernandes RA were involved in the conception, data collection, performing the analysis and interpretation of data.
Supported by FAPESP, No. 2015/19710-3 and No. 2018/22593-7; FAPESP to Wésley Torres, No. 2018/09131-4; and CNPq, No. 2893293992696924.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Wesley Torres, MSc, Teacher, Department of Physical Education, Sao Paulo State University-UNESP, Roberto Simonsen Street 305, Presidente Prudente 19060900, Sao Paulo, Brazil. wesley.torres@unesp.br
Received: July 29, 2021
Peer-review started: July 29, 2021
First decision: November 11, 2021
Revised: December 17, 2021
Accepted: May 26, 2022
Article in press: May 26, 2022
Published online: July 9, 2022
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Cardiovascular diseases have a high prevalence in adults and their development begins in the first decades of life. On the other hand, sports participation in childhood and adolescence provides benefits which can delay the onset of these diseases.

AIM

To synthesize the available literature on the impact of sports participation on cardiovascular outcomes in children and adolescents.

METHODS

This systematic review was conducted on studies of children and adolescents (aged 8-18 years) who regularly practiced a sport and had reported cardiovascular outcomes (blood pressure and intima-media thickness) recorded. The Medline/PubMed, SciELO, Reference Citation Analysis (https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/) and Bireme databases were searched.

RESULTS

In total, 3314 publications for blood pressure and 122 publications for intima-media thickness were identified in the databases. After exclusions (e.g., duplicate articles, animal studies and those that did not meet the inclusion criteria), four publications for blood pressure (449 adolescents) and two publications for intima-media thickness were included (402 adolescents). For blood pressure, all publications were longitudinal in design (follow-up ranging from 12 wk to 12 mo) and involved adolescents aged from 8 years to 18 years of age. For intima-media thickness, both publications were longitudinal in design and involved adolescents aged from 11 years to 18 years of age.

CONCLUSION

Sports participation seems to promote benefits to cardiovascular structure and function in adolescents. However, studies with adolescents are scarce and further research is needed to understand this phenomenon.

Keywords: Pediatrics, Adolescents, Sports, Blood pressure, Intima-media thickness

Core Tip: Obesity, poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk for cardiovascular disease in adulthood. On the other hand, sports participation reduces blood pressure and children and adolescents engaged in sports tend to present better arterial thickness values. In this way, those who practice sports regularly may present better cardiovascular health. In this review we seek to characterize the results of sports practice in adolescence on aspects related to cardiovascular health.