Sports Medicine, Injuries, and Genetics

Dear Colleagues, 

In the first decade of the 21st century, a disturbing trend was observed related to a significant increase in injuries of the human musculoskeletal system. Therefore, the first decade of the 21st century was announced by WHO as the decade of bone and joint diseases. Undoubtedly, the growing number of injuries is related to the popularization of physical activity. Spontaneous or stimulated by the current trend, taking up the challenge of even amateur physical activity most often does not go hand in hand with basic motor preparation, protecting the joints against the effects of injuries. The increase in the frequency of injuries is also noted in professional sport, where players are subjected to enormous pressure to achieve sports success, which results in exceeding their own physical limitations, even at the cost of possible injuries. Increased frequency of injuries also has its social effects in the form of professional absenteeism, as well as economic effects related to considerable costs of treatment and rehabilitation, and a relatively long period of recovery.

It should be emphasized that when talking about sports medicine, we should expand our thinking beyond the context of orthopedic issues. We should remember that sports medicine deals with all the processes taking place in the human body during physical activity and after exercise. The general goal of sports medicine specialists is to take care of healthy people who regularly practice sports, as well as patients with indications for the implementation of systematic physical activity. Therefore, specialists in the field of sports medicine have to cope with the challenges not only in the field of orthopedics, but also, and perhaps above all, rehabilitation, surgery and cardiology. We must also not forget about the importance of proper nutrition for the functioning of the human body, especially in physically active people. Each of these contexts is related - in one way or another - with genetic aspects. There is evidence that there is a heritability component to athletic performance. Today it is becoming widely accepted that genetic factors have a great influence not only on athletic performance but also on injury susceptibility in individual athletes who are carriers of specified genetic sequence variants. Many variants of genes have been discovered that play a key role in the formation of structural elements that build the human musculoskeletal system - the diversity of such genes may, to some extent, determine the susceptibility to injuries often observed in both professional and amateur sports. Genes influencing the functioning of the cardiovascular system, the differentiation of which determines the fitness and endurance of the athlete's body, have also been described. We also know that the presence of various sequence variants, as well as the diversity of expression regulation or epigenetic modification of various genome fragments, can significantly affect the processes related to the rehabilitation of people suffering from various types of injuries.

The multitude of issues makes it impossible to exhaust the subject of our Special Issue, but we hope that at least some of them will be interesting and inspiring for you to make new challenges in the field of Sports Medicine, Injuries, and Genetics.

Prof. Dr. Agnieszka Maciejewska-Skrendo
Prof. Dr. Paweł Ciȩszczyk
Guest Editors

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• sports medicine
• injuries
• genetic factors
• risk factors