[Hematologic features of olympic volley-ball athletes].

Athletes tend to have lower hemoglobin concentrations than sedentary counterparts. Sports anemia is used to describe both pseudodilutional anemia and the true anemia of athletes. Pseudodilutional anemia is a beneficial adaptation to endurance training; the two most common causes of true anemia are iron deficiency and intravascular hemolysis. We used questionnaires, physical examination and laboratory investigation to study 16 volley-ball highly trained athletes and 23 outpatients with the same ages and gender that have not had any significant disease. All athletes and patients had Hb > 13 g/dl; the athletes hab Hb and hematocrit lower than the control patients; 25% of the athletes had both total and indirect bilirubin increased. Seven patients and only one athlete had intestinal parasitic infestation. These data support the idea that in São Paulo-Brazil among athletes overt anemia is uncommon but the volleyball athletes are in a borderline anemic state.