Research summary · Para sport
Airway testing in elite athletes with spinal cord injury
Researchers compared airway measurements in 11 elite wheelchair rugby athletes with cervical spinal cord injury and 11 wheelchair basketball athletes with thoracic injury, before and after an inhaled bronchodilator.
- Publication year
- 2026
- First published online
- Publication type
- Comparative laboratory before-and-after study
- Journal
- Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
- Population / context
- Paralympic wheelchair rugby and basketball
What the publication reports
Resting respiratory resistance was similar between groups. Resistance fell more in the cervical-injury group after medication; forced-oscillation testing detected individual changes more often than spirometry. No participant's improvement in forced expiratory volume exceeded the measurement-error threshold.
Limits and interpretation
The small sample confounds injury level with sport and cannot establish training-induced adaptations. This acute physiological experiment did not test exercise performance, symptoms or long-term treatment benefit and does not support routine medication use by athletes.
Read the source
Consult the original record for the full author list, methods, references, funding and competing-interest disclosures.
Respiratory System Resistance and Bronchodilator Responsiveness in Paralympic Athletes with Spinal Cord Injury
Original publication / indexed recordPMID: 42885851DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000004198Reader discussion
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