EFFECT OF ULTRA-ENDURANCE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY ON THE RESPIRATORY HEALTH OF THE WOMEN RUNNERS

Background: Endurance physical activities like running are beneficial for enhancement in immunity and functional health. But excessive and high intensity sustained endurance physical activities like marathon and ultra-marathon running might negatively affect the immune capacity of the participants at least temporarily due to high inflammatory stress. Compromises in upper respiratory tract health may be common among recreational marathon runners. Methods: Thirty women recreational marathon runners above the age of forty years participated in the study. WURSS-44 questionnaire was used to quantify the URTI symptom scores of the participants on the previous day of the run, followed by after one day, three days, five days, seven and nine days. ANOVA was used to find out the variance among the different days at 0.05 level of significance. Results: Variance analysis indicated that there was significant difference among the different days URTI scores (F=3.2441at P of 0.0079) of the group and the Tukey's HSD post hoc analysis brings out that there was significant difference between the run previous day score and the after seventh day score (4.78 at P of p<0.05) and also significant difference between the post first day score and the post ninth day score (4.349 at P of p<0.05) for the group. Conclusion: Above forty years women recreational runners' group of the study experienced significant increments in their URTI symptoms score due to their acute marathon running event