| Popis: |
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 215 million people in the world were affected with more than 4,5 million deaths, attributed to this disease. Clinical manifestation and complications are much more common among the elderly, however many young people as well as athletes were also affected by the disease. Evidence was found that COVID-19 could be transmitted by asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic individuals which led to the cancellation of many sports events and championships as well as the Bulgarian Football League, which had a huge individual, financial and social impact. On the basis of the limited available data, athletes who tend to be younger with no comorbidities are less likely to develop moderate to critical symptoms from COVID-19 and may instead be asymptomatic or experience a mild, flu-like illness. Since young athletes are people with a very good health status and strong immune response, the majority of cases were characterized by absent or very mild clinical sings such as fatigue, muscle pain, subfebrile core body temperature, loss of smell or taste and did not develop the complete clinical manifestation associated with pneumonia, dyspnea and acute respiratory distress syndrome. However, with time it was understood that COVID-19 is not only associated with acute complications but it can also cause an autoimmune response causing different chronic complications such as thrombosis, myocarditis, autonomic dysfunction, left or even right ventricular dysfunction, that were also observed in some athletes, arrhythmias and acute-onset heart failure, neuropsychiatric sequel. Many athletes complained of inexplicable fatigue on the background of completely normal cardio-pulmonary and blood tests, which could be speculated to be a result of the post COVID-19 autonomic dysfunction, whoever some other authors suggested that the fatigue is not a result of the autonomic dysfunction. |
