Marjan Sheidaee1*, Fahimeh Esfarjani2, Seyed Mohammad Marandi3
Cerebral palsy is one of the most common causes of disability in children. This disorder causes motor disabilities in growing children. The present study aims to determine the effect of 4 months of resistance training on the levels of GH, IGF-1 and IGFBP3 in plasma of children diagnosed with spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy. The method of this research is a quasi-experimental pretest – posttest method. The testees of this study were divided into two groups: an experimental group (10 people) and control group (8 people) with an age range of 10 to 13 years. In the pretest, blood sample of the members of two groups were taken in order to measure GH, IGF-1 and IGFBP3. Then, the experimental group gone through a 4-month of additional resistance training. The exercises began with weight training and then exercises with balls and resistance bands were added to them. The control group did not take part in any kind of athletic activities. After the intervention, in the posttest stage, the sampling was done again. In order to analyze the data and comparing the process of variation of GH, IGF-1 and IGFBP3 values in the two groups, analysis of variance with repeated measures was used. The results showed that participation in resistance trainings led to a 126-percent increase in GH, a 59-percent increase in IGF-1 and an 82-percent increase in IGFBP3 which were significant variations compared to the control group (P<0.05). It seems that long-term resistance training can cause an enhancement in the growth factors in people diagnosed with cerebral palsy and prevent the reverse process and an excessive reduction of these factor due to these factors.
