Physical exercise-induced bronchial asthma in athletes: unsolved problems and possibilities of prophylaxis and therapy (review)

Abstract

Physical exercise-induced bronchial asthma is a disease, which is one of the reasons for the removal of athletes from training and sports. At the same time, if treatment is adequate, athletes can attain high results. The algorithm of physical exercise-induced asthma diagnostics should include, in addition to the purely medical standard examination, the testing under conditions of loads modelling and in the course of natural training process for the estimation of variations in the peak rate of expiration. The prophylaxis of bronchoconstriction attacks under physical loads in athletes with this disease must be based on their teaching: keeping a diet, obligatory intense warm-up load, and use of pharmacological drugs, including those with the metabolitotropic, immunomodulative, and energotonic actions. When having physical exercise-induced asthma, the therapeutic approach must obligatorily be considered that a significant part of bronchodilators is referred to the substances forbidden in sport and will be built on this basis. At present, there exist the targeted methodologies of prophylaxis and treatment of this disease in athletes with the use of allowed medicinal agents such as antileucotrienes. They are permitted for the application to young and adult athletes and give a high therapeutic effect with insignificant number of side phenomena.