Although regular physical exercise is beneficial for health, competitive ballroom dancers anecdotally report increased disease susceptibility. This study aims to uncover possible biological mechanisms and pathways that may lead to higher disease susceptibility in a population of otherwise healthy young athletes. Experienced ballroom dancers and healthy controls provided blood and saliva samples in order to assess diurnal cortisol and alpha-amylase (sAA) output as well as inflammatory parameters interleukin (IL)-6 and C-reactive protein (CRP). We found diurnal cortisol and sAA output to be significantly lower in dancers. Additionally, higher levels in IL-6 but not in CRP were shown in dancers. Dancers described themselves as being more anxious and reported more physical health complaints. Competitive ballroom dancers show evidence for hypoactivity in stress systems and peripheral inflammation along with more self-reported physical complaints. Therefore, competitive ballroom dancing represents a chronic stressor that can lead to important functional consequences. It remains to be investigated whether these alterations are causally related to health.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 11. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 February 2021.
All research outputs
#3,865,975
of 28,766,646 outputs
Outputs from Biological Psychology
#363
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#25,357
of 194,391 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biological Psychology
#5
of 13 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,766,646 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 86th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,909 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.4. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 194,391 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 13 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its contemporaries.
