Association of COVID-19 incidence with objectively and subjectively measured mental health proxies in the Austrian Football League: an epidemiological study

  1. Antje van der Zee-Neuen
  2. Alexander Seymer
  3. Dagmar Schaffler-Schaden
  4. Juergen Herfert
  5. James O Brien
  6. Tim Johansson
  7. Patrick Kutschar
  8. Stephan Ludwig
  9. Thomas Stoeggl
  10. David Keeley
  11. Maria Flamm
  12. Juergen Osterbrink

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Abstract

Objective We aimed to explore the association of COVID-19 incidence with mental health in 225 team and staff members of five professional Austrian Football clubs captured by objective (location variance) or subjective (self-reported sleep quality, level of recovery, perceived risk of infection) mental health proxies. Methods Data collected during the implementation of a novel monitoring concept to enable safe continuation of professional Football during the COVID-19 pandemic were matched with Austrian COVID-19 incidence data and smartphone collected location data (time-period June 17th to July 31st, 2020). Multivariable linear regression models explored the association of COVID-19 incidence, defined as daily novel or active cases of COVID-19, with the objective and subjective health proxies while adjusting for the occurrence of one COVID-19 case in a staff member in one of the clubs, team status (i.e. player vs staff) and game days. Results Data from 115 participants were analysed. An increasing number of novel COVID-19 cases was significantly associated with deteriorating sleep quality (B 0.48, 95% CI 0.05; 1.00) but with none of the other mental health proxies. An increasing number of active COVID-19 cases was significantly associated with an increase in perceived infection risk (B 0.04, 95% CI 0.00; 0.07) and location variance (B 0.28, 95% CI 0.06; 0.49). Conclusion The adverse association of an increasing COVID-19 incidence with mental health in professional Footballers and staff members became obvious particularly in subjectively measured mental health. During the ongoing pandemic, targeted mental care should be included in the daily routines of this population.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.27.21250527: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Strengths and limitations: This study offered the unique possibility to study various mental health outcomes in a population of elite Footballers providing insight in their response to an increasing COVID-19 incidence. The combination of data from multiple sources (i.e. governmental data on COVID-19 incidence, GNSS-data from a specifically designed app and self-reported mental health data) in the statistical analyses of our paper emphasize the individuality and quality of the current study. However, several limitations should be addressed. The data collected by the smartphone app were fragmented and sampling unbalanced (i.e. largest proportion of observations was affiliated with club E) leading to potential misinterpretation of the association of COVID-19 incidence with location variance. The lack of data density may be attributable to participants reluctance to continuous submission of location data (14). We aimed to mitigate this issue by aggregating the data, relying on solid statistical procedures and cautiously drawn conclusions. The current study collected data during a rather stable period in the COVID-19 pandemic (23). It is likely, that more variance in the mental health proxies would have been observed 1) in a period with more rapidly growing COVID-19 incidence or 2) when employing instruments that are more sensitive to small changes in mental health. Yet, it should be noted that the original study (from which the data for the current analyses were derived) did not ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.27.21250527v1 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1080/26895293.2021.1994473