The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of wheelchair basketball training on plasma catecholamine, serum lipids and lipoproteins in the spinal cord injured(SCI).
This study included 9 SCI men with mean age of 31 in the treatment group and 9 SCI men with mean age 32 in the control group. The subjects in the treatment group volunteered to train for aerobic exercise. They performed wheelchair basketball over 1 hour in every two or more days a week for 12 weeks.
Pre- and post- exercise test were administered using the arm ergometer with 12.5 watt increase in every minute from 0 watt until subjects were exhausted. Before each test two minutes, warm-up(25 watt, 50rpm) and two minutes, rest were done. l0㎖ of blood was sampled from median cubital, vein three times, just before the exercise, immediately after the maximal exercise, and 30 minutes after the exercise.
Analysis of covariance and paired t-test were employed for data analysis at the .05 level of significance.
The results of this study were as follows:
1. After the 12-week wheelchair basketball training, pre- and post-test on the levels of concentration of plasma catecholamine for each session were not changed significantly. There was a significant difference between the concentration of plasma catecholamine at rest and the concentration of plasma catecholamine immediately after the maximal exercise(p<.01). After the exercise, the rate of decrement of plasma catecholamine concentration 30 minutes after the exercise was appeared statistically significant(p<.01).
2. After the 12-week wheelchair basketball training, the levels of total cholesterol, triglyceride, and LDL-cholesterol were not changed significantly, whereas the level of HDL-cholesterol increased(p<.05) and the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL-cholesterol decreased statistically significant(p<.01).