Use of analgesics in professional soccer players: A systematic review

Objective: Use of painkillers appears to have become a widespread issue in the sporting environ-ment as athletes pursue successful pain relief during competitions. We conducted a systematic review on the prevalence of analgesics use in soccer, using literature from January 1980 to July 2021.Methods: The systematic review followed PRISMA guidelines. Studies were obtained from the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science (WOS) databases. In total, 213 articles were found where 14 were selected. The risk of bias was assessed using the NIH scale for preva-lence studies and the PEDro quality scale for randomized control trials (RCTs).Results: Less than 3% of the literature were randomized studies (n=10 observational; n=4 dou-ble-blind trials) and only 2 studies included females. At least 54% of the research subjects con-sumed analgesic drugs during the course of their tournaments, and nearly half of them (39-67%) did so before each match, mostly in the form of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) (15% of daily use). Conclusion: Given that short-term observational studies indicated high consumption of analge-sics despite limited evidence of their pain control effectiveness, the question is raised whether