As publicações sobre recursos ergogênicos na área de ciências do esporte têm prevalência de resultados positivos?

Abstract

Introduction: In the sporting context, the search for strategies that promote an improvement in physical performance by stimulating an ergogenic effect or a faster recovery, has attracted the attention of researchers. However, we believe that publications on ergogenic resources (ERs) are being influenced by publication bias, with greater acceptance for the publication of works that have a significantly favorable outcome for the intervention, while works with non-significant results in favor of the interventions are being deleted. Objectives: To identify the prevalence of positive results in studies that investigated the effects of ergogenic resources on physical performance. Materials and Methods: 20 sports science journals with the highest impact factor measured by the Journal Citation Report® (JCR) were used to search for articles. Journals were included in descending order of impact factor and excluded according to the following criteria: a) Exclusively publish reviews; b) publish exclusively medical treatments. In a second analysis, the articles that dealt with ERs in the selected newspapers were not included according to the following: a) exclusively evaluating cognitive performance; b) Have restricted access to the study's contents. From the selected works, we did their characterization and analysis of the main outcome of the study. Results: From 219 studies, 150 were included, as they met the established criteria. The characterization of the study sample constituted a total n = 3000 (men = 2253, women = 586, and 161 participants with unreported sex) aged 26.3 ± 9.4 years. Of the 150 articles analyzed, 114 (76%) reported a positive effect, 4 (2.7%) articles reported a negative effect, and 32 (21.7%) articles reported no effect of the resource applied. In the outcomes of the performance variables, 181 (40.3%) variables had statistically significant effects, 18 (4%) variables had significant negative changes and 250 (55.7%) variables had no statistical effect. Discussion: By analyzing the articles that investigated the effects of ergogenic resources published in 2020 in 20 relevant journals in the field of sports science, a prevalence of articles with reported outcomes in the work with positive results was identified. However, when verifying the influence that the ergogenic resources exerted on the performance variables, this prevalence of positive results is not supported, since most of the variables did not show significant effects of the use of ergogenic resources. From these results, it is possible to speculate the existence of publication bias in research involving ergogenic resources. Conclusion: There is a prevalence of publications with positive outcomes, which is not supported when analyzing the effects of ergogenic resources on performance variables.