The Effect of Twelve Weeks of Regular Exercise with Vitamin C Supplementation in Winter on The Rate of Respiratory Tract Infections in Male High School Students

Respiratory tract infections are one of the health problems in the world that impose high economic costs on families. Studies have shown that regular exercise and vitamin C supplementation have favorable effects on people's health. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of 12 weeks of regular exercise and vitamin C supplementation on respiratory tract infections in male students.  In this clinical trial study, 120 high school students were randomly assigned to four groups of 30 subjects, including: 1) placebo, 2) exercise, 3) exercise + vitamin C supplementation, and 4) vitamin C supplementation. Groups 2 and 3 performed the selected exercises three sessions per week for 12 weeks, and groups 3 and 4 consumed three 250 mg vitamin C tablets per week. The number of days of infection, the frequency of cases, and the week of the first respiratory infections were recorded during the research period. In order to analyze the findings, the one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s  post- hoc tests in SPSS software (version 22) were used (P≤0.05).  The number of days of respiratory infections in the exercise group was significantly lower than the placebo (P=0.001) and vitamin C groups (P=0.02), The number of days of respiratory infections in the exercise (P=0.007) and vitamin C (P=0.007) groups was significantly lower than the exercise + vitamin C group. Nevertheless, in the exercise + vitamin C group, the first week of lung infection was higher than the vitamin C group (P=0.04).  It seems that regular exercise can be useful in preventing respiratory infections in male high school students, but the effectiveness of vitamin C is dose-dependent, and thus more studies on vitamin C are needed.