A small pill swallowed by athletes before they take part in a mass participation event was trialled for the first time at the Brighton Marathon on Sunday which could see new levels in health and safety at events across the world.
Doctors Todd Leckie and Luke Hodgson, from University Hospitals Sussex (UHSussex), are part of the Brighton Marathon Research Group (BMRG), a partnership between University of Brighton (Dr Alan Richardson, Dr Dan Fitzpatrick and International Olympic Committee member, Professor Yannis Pitsiladis), UHSussex and the Military.
On Sunday, they conducted a study into life-threatening hyperthermia and heat illness in marathon runners. Nearly 100 volunteer athletes took part in the study during the Brighton race.
Increases in body temperature are common in runners during and immediately after endurance events like the marathon and in a small number of people this can be severe and, on occasion, be life threatening when this evolves into heat stroke.
The team are running a study combining tiny ingestible pills with wearable technology and biomarkers and they hope to better understand changes in bodily processes that happen to runners at a mass participation event.
These changes can be difficult to pick-up, or even missed. Some people with even very severe heat stroke may initially only display very small changes in the way they look and act.
Diagnosis is reliant on getting an accurate ‘core’ body temperature reading, which can be difficult to achieve. With technology, it is now possible to use ingestible pills to detect core body temperature accurately.
Luke said: “The cutting-edge technology can present results in real-time. It has only ever been reported at last year’s Tokyo Olympics in elite athletes, with no previous such study in a mass participation event. The Brighton Marathon was the first time.
“95 runners wore up to three lightweight physiological monitoring systems, mounted on the chest, wrist or triceps and were able to report in-race core body temperature, heart rate and at the end of the race collected information on how the body’s organs were responding.”
The researchers also compared the volunteer runner’s results with nine collapsed athletes in the event. This will help to provide further insights into this area of study. In the context of global warming, this will be of increasing importance in the future.
Luke added: “This study will let us know what a ‘normal’ body temperature response to a marathon is.
“The successful use of the telemetry pills could be used to pick-up at an earlier stage when athletes are getting ‘hot’ – so for example you could identify times when athletes could be advised to pace themselves better or take on cooling drinks.
“With wearable tech the info can be made available live ‘in race’ for organisers of such events. Comparing collapsed athletes temperatures and biomarkers with those who do not collapse will allow us to look for markers that may be able to identify athletes at highest risk.
“This work can also be used in other areas, in particular where workers or athletes have to deal with really high temperatures, such as fire-fighters, the World Cup in Qatar, the Paris Olympics, and the Military”.