Puccini V. Antibiotic Therapy and Athletes: Is the Mitochondrial Dysfunction the Real Achilles’ Heel?
Sports (Basel) 2022;
10:131. [PMID:
36136386 PMCID:
PMC9504712 DOI:
10.3390/sports10090131]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/10/2022] [Revised: 07/26/2022] [Accepted: 08/12/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
It is widely recognized that athletes consume oral antibiotics almost twice as often as observed in the non-sports population in order to reduce as much as possible the period of inactivity due to bacterial diseases. However, increasing evidences have demonstrated the ability of some classes of antibiotics to induce muscle weakness, pain, and a feeling of fatigue upon resuming physical activity conditions that considerably limit the athletic performance of athletes, ascribable to alterations in the biochemical mechanisms underlying normal musculoskeletal activity, such as mitochondrial respiration. For this reason, tailoring a treatment plan for effective antibiotics that limit an athlete’s risk is paramount to their safety and ability to maintain adequate athletic performance. The present review illustrates and critically analyzes the evidence on the use of antibiotics in sports, deepening the molecular mechanisms underlying the onset and development of muscle–tendon alterations in athletes as well as delineating the pharmacological strategies aimed at counteracting such adverse events.
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