The Comparison of Bone Mineral Density in Upper and Lower Body between Professional Female Footsal Players and Non-Athletes

The purpose of this study was to compare the bone mineral density (BMD) of the upper and lower body between professional female footsal players and non-athlete females.Fifteen professional female footsal players (age: 24.3 ± 2.8 years, height: 161.1 ± 4.4 cm, weight: 54.3 ± 7.0 kg) and 15 healthy non-athlete females (age: 23.8 ± 2.0 years, height: 160.9 ± 7.0 cm, weight: 51.5 ± 9.6 kg) participated in this study. BMD was measured by Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) at the lumbar spines and femoral neck, femoral trochanter of both legs.In footsal players BMD values were found to be significantly higher at the whole body, lower and upper body compared with non-athletes. BMD of footsal players in upper and lower body was 1269.1 and 1161.0 mg/cm2 respectively. These values for non-athletes were 1102.4 and 877.7 mg/cm2 respectively. The difference between these sites in both groups was statistically significant (P < 0.01). When the BMD values of the footsal players were compared with non-athletes, we found that the BMD gain in the lower body of the footsal players relative to the non-athletes was twice as much as the upper body of footsal players compared to the non-athletes.It seems that weight bearing and high impact loads are the most important factors to improve the BMD in lower body. The bones of lower body are subjected to multidirectional, dynamic compressive, and sheer forces during footsal activities such as the starts, jumping, landing, cutting and running. Therefore, it can be concluded that the BMD of the lower body were benefited more than upper body in footsal players.