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Abstract Body

Physical activity is essential for children’s optimal physical, emotional, and psychosocial development. Moreover, in combination with healthy eating habits, it reduces the risk of obesity and diet-related diseases, potentially increasing life’s length and quality. However, despite these benefits, fewer than 50% of children and adolescents in most European countries meet WHO recommendations for adequate physical activity.

On the other hand, sports activity can sometimes pose a threat to health and even life associated with the occurrence of congenital disabilities symptoms, comorbidities, and increasing problems with doping and overuse of supplements in youth sport. The youth athletes who desires to compete at higher levels often train longer, harder, and with intense dedication which presents unique challenges to the developing athlete’s body risk of overuse injuries and increased risk for overtraining syndrome.

Therefore, apart from promoting sports activity, paediatricians should have an essential role in pre-participation physical evaluation and follow-up, which primary objective is to screen for potentially life-threatening conditions. Such screening is also increasingly required by legal and insurance requirements. Particular attention should be paid to adolescents who practice the extreme sports that are gaining in popularity but carry a raised health risk.

Although approximately 10% of athletes have a significant finding during the screening, only ≤ 2% of athletes are ultimately disqualified from sports participation.

This lecture will discuss sports activity classifications, and recommended diagnostic examinations during the pre-participation physical evaluation and follow-up visits. Problems related to physical activity in children with chronic diseases will also be presented.

Background and Aims

It is often challenging to diagnose eating disorders (ED) in time because patients hide their disease. However, many signs may indicate the development of ED. Some signs are obvious, such as malnutrition, while others are less obvious, such as changes in blood tests.

This study aimed to determine the differences in serum concentrations of total amylase, electrolytes, total protein, albumin, iron, ferritin, vitamin B12, 25-OH vitamin D and folic acid between pediatric patients with ED and control subjects.

Methods

101 subjects with a mean age of 14.34±1.99 were included in this cross-sectional study; 50 patients with ED and 51 control subjects. Subjects in both groups did not differ statistically significantly by age (p = 0.261). Serum analyses were performed.

Results

Serum concentrations of total amylase (p=0.052), magnesium (p=0.007), albumin (p<0.001), ferritin (p<0.001), and vitamin B12 (p<0.001) were marginally or significantly higher, while the concentration of total proteins (p=0.017) and folic acid (p=0.018) were significantly lower in patients with ED than in control subjects. Other electrolytes, 25-OH vitamin D and iron concentrations in serum did not significantly differ between the examined groups (p>0.05).

Conclusions

The study showed the differences in the blood tests that could indicate the development of ED. Early recognition of these differences in the presence of other symptoms of ED can undoubtedly contribute to earlier diagnosis of ED and better treatment success.