Exercise and other indirect challenges to demonstrate asthma or exercise-induced bronchoconstriction in athletes

Exercise-Induced Bronchospasm in Soccer Athletes Living in a Tropical Humid Region

“…The adopted spirometry acceptability criteria [19] and the stricter diagnostic criteria of a fall of >10% at two consecutive time points [20] minimized bias as a possible cause for the observed results. Furthermore, the challenge stimulus for EIB diagnosis that utilize exercise in the field, similar to the athlete's sport activity, are considered valid and even more efficient than those done in the laboratory with controlled environment temperature and humidity [8]. It is possible that if the exercise challenges were done with athletes breathing dry air this prevalence would be higher.…”

“…Discontinuation of the physical activities leads to the reduction or gradual disappearance of these phenomena [29]. The presence of asthma or atopy potentiates all those factors [8].…”

“…Some sports organizations have established EIB screening programs for all of their internationally competitive athletes but this is far from being a consensus [35]. On the other hand, it is clear that individuals with exercise associated respiratory complaints and/or a clinical diagnosis of asthma that are engaged in competitive sportive activities should be evaluated for EIB [3,8,9,12,15,20,24,35].…”

“…It is found in high proportion of asthmatic children and adolescents and among asthmatic athletes EIB is diagnosed in up to 90% of them, varying with the adopted diagnostic protocol, exercise intensity and breathing air conditions [3][4][5]. Depending on sport modality and the diagnostic protocol adopted, the prevalence of EIB in non-asthmatic elite athletes varies from 8% to 50% [6][7][8].…”

Dyspneic athlete

“…If EVH is not available, this is the next best test. The optimal test is 8 minutes in duration and allows the patient to reach 80 %-90 % of their maximal heart rate by 2 minutes into the test and maintain it for the following 6 minutes [32,33]. False negative results may occur if adequate exercise and environmental stress are not provided in the evaluation of EIB [1••].…”