PREVALENCE AND FEATURES OF JOINT HYPERMOBILITY AMONG ADOLESCENT ATHLETES

Objective: To determine the prevalence of joint hypermobility in a gro up of adolescent, interscholastic athletes. Design: Cross-sectional; d escriptive or observational. Setting: Free preparticipation physical e xaminations for sports. Subjects: Two hundred and sixty-four athletes (150 male, 114 female; average age, 15.5 years) comprised the entire s et of athletes who came to our clinic for free physical examinations. Intervention and Main Outcome Measures: We screened 264 athletes using the widely accepted Carter-Wilkinson-Beighton method, which examines range of motion at the knees, trunk, fingers, thumbs, and elbows bilat erally and employs a 0 to 9 scoring scheme (5 = hypermobile). We also used an ''injury allowance,'' whereby if an athlete screened positive for only one side of a bilateral test but had a history of injury to t he corresponding side, he or she was given an injury allowance point. Results: Thirty-two scored 5 or higher, with another 2 screening posit ive for hypermobility by the injury allowance, for a total of 34 hyper mobile athletes (12.9%). There was a highly significant difference bet ween sexes (P < .001), with 25 female (22%) and 9 male subjects (6%) t esting positive. Conclusions: The overall prevalence of hypermobility and the significant sex difference found in this group of adolescent a thletes were similar to nonathlete populations of comparable age. Rese arch on nonathletes has been relied on by many to recommend that hyper mobile persons avoid strenuous physical activity; however, research on athletes is less than conclusive. Given that a significant segment of young athletes, especially females, may be hypermobile, prospective s tudies are warranted to investigate this question before we can justif y depriving hypermobile youths of the many known benefits of regular o r strenuous exercise.