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DOI: 10.1055/a-2180-4594
Exploring Growth, Maturity, and Age as Injury Risk Factors in High-Level Youth Football

Abstract
Rapid somatic growth and biological maturity status may affect injury patterns in youth football, yet firm conclusions cannot be drawn from the existing research. We aimed to explore growth velocity, maturity, and age as injury risk factors in 95 academy players (11.9–15.0 years), using anthropometric (height and body mass), maturity (skeletal age), injury, and football exposure data collected prospectively over three seasons (2016/17–2018/19). We compared the relative quality of mixed-effects logistic regression models with growth velocity for 223 growth intervals (average 113 days) included as fixed effects and adjusted for age (chronological or skeletal) plus load (hours/week). Associations were considered practically relevant based on the confidence interval for odds ratios, using thresholds of 0.90 and 1.11 to define small beneficial and harmful effects, respectively. We observed harmful effects of older age on overall (OR: 2.61, 95% CI: 1.15–5.91) and sudden onset (1.98, 1.17–3.37) injury risk. Significant associations (p<0.05) were observed for higher body mass change and greater maturity on sudden onset injuries, and for higher hours/week on gradual onset, bone tissue, and physis injuries. Future studies should include larger samples, monitoring athletes from pre-adolescence through maturation, to enable within-subject analyses and better understand the relationship between growth, maturation, and injuries.
Publication History
Received: 08 March 2023
Received: 02 September 2023
Accepted: 18 September 2023
Accepted Manuscript online:
11 October 2023
Article published online:
08 January 2024
© 2024. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Georg Thieme Verlag KG
Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany
Eirik Halvorsen Wik, Karim Chamari, Montassar Tabben, Valter Di Salvo, Warren Gregson, Roald Bahr. Exploring Growth, Maturity, and Age as Injury Risk Factors in High-Level Youth Football. Sports Med Int Open 2024; 08: a21804594.
DOI: 10.1055/a-2180-4594
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