NCT03910517

Musculoskeletal Pain Among E-sport Athletes

Completed Last updated 9 July 2019

What this trial tests

trial testing No intervention in Musculoskeletal Pain in 208 participants. Completed in 26 April 2019.

Timeline

27 March 2019

Primary endpoint
26 April 2019

26 April 2019

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	University College of Northern Denmark
Status	Completed
Study type	OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment	208
Start date	27 March 2019
Primary completion	26 April 2019
Estimated completion	26 April 2019
Sites	1 location across Denmark

Drugs / interventions tested

• No intervention

Conditions studied

• Musculoskeletal Pain — all drugs for Musculoskeletal Pain →

Sponsor

University College of Northern Denmark

Who can join

Adults 15 to 35, any sex, with Musculoskeletal Pain. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Background:

Musculoskeletal (MSK) pain and injuries are common in endurance sports where athletes are required to perform at high intensity for long periods of time. In the short term, MSK pain may significantly impair the athletes' performance, which can lead to unwanted time-off from practice and competitive tournaments. Previous studies found an association between training load, MSK pain and performance. These results indicate that an athlete may experience MSK pain or get injured from both too low and to high training loads.

Electronic sports (E-sports), also known as competitive gaming, is defined by Hamari and Sjöblom as "a form of sports where the primary aspects of the sport is facilitated by electronic systems; the input of players and teams as well as the output of the E-sports system are mediated by human-computer interference".

There are only few data on MSK pain in E-sports, however a small study with 65 participants found that 41% suffered from back or neck pain and more than 1 in 3 had pain related to the wrist. E-sports athletes have to perform for an extended period of time, similar to athletes from traditional endurance sport. As such, MSK pain in E-sports may be associated with training load like it is seen in other sports. Therefore, MSK pain in E-sports could be an unrecognised issue. To provide health professionals with and optimal starting point for managing these issues, there is a need for well-conducted studies on the prevalence of MSK pain among E-sports athletes. In addition, it is highly relevant to investigate if training loads related to E-sports and physical activity levels are different among athletes with MSK pain compared to athletes without MSK pain.

Aims:

The aims of this questionnaire-based cross-sectional study are to; I) investigate the prevalence of MSK pain in E-sports athletes, II) assess if training loads among athletes with MSK pain are different from athletes without MSK pain, III) investigate if physical activity levels among athletes with MSK pain are different from athletes without MSK pain and IIII) descriptively present data on participant characteristics, sleep patterns, physical activity levels and utilization of health professionals and pain medication in the study population.

Publications & conference data

1 peer-reviewed publication reference this trial (live from Europe PMC):

1. Musculoskeletal pain is common in competitive gaming: a cross-sectional study among Danish esports athletes.
   Lindberg L, Nielsen SB, Damgaard M, Sloth OR, et al · · 2020 · cited 22× · PMID 33585039 · DOI 10.1136/bmjsem-2020-000799