Are you doing too much sport for your joints?

[31 January 2012 - 17h48]

Once they retire, former high-level sportsmen have a risk of developing osteoarthritis that is twice as high as that of sporting amateurs or people who have not been involved in sport at all. According to a Swedish study, footballers, handball players and hockey players are the most at risk. And, it seems, logically so…

Professor Magnus Tveit and his colleagues at the University of Lund studied 709 former sportsmen between the ages of 50 and 93 who had all reached a professional level in their sport. They also put together a control group of 1,368 men of the same age who had had very little or no involvement at all in sport.

The results showed that there was arthritis of the knee or hip present in over 85% of the high-level sportsmen. “The latter make too great a demand on their joints and do so repeatedly”, the author reports. It should be noted that the majority of the sports professionals recruited for this study had played high-risk sports such as football, handball and hockey. However, among the amateur sportsmen, Professor Tveit did not observe any effect from exercise on the risk of developing osteoarthritis.

He also points out that the benefits associated with sport outweigh the risk of arthritis. It all depends in fact on the type of sport and the intensity with which it is practised. For example, it is best to focus on activities such as swimming, cycling and walking.

Source : The American Journal of Sports Medicine, doi:10.1177 – French Rheumatology Society, site consulted 18 January 2012

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