Bone Mineral Density Changes in NCAA Division I Female Acrobatics & Tumbling Athletes Across Collegiate Career

Acrobatics and tumbling (A&T) has gained significant attention since becoming an official National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sport about a decade ago. The sport requires elite-level athletic abilities to perform tosses, lifts, and tumbling, making maintaining optimal body composition a key priority. However, little is known about the longitudinal impacts of the sport’s elite training and competition on specific aspects of body composition of its athletes. PURPOSE: To analyze changes in total and segmental bone mineral density over the course of entire collegiate career in Division I female A&T athletes. METHODS: Division I female A&T athletes underwent total body composition dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans on a quarterly basis from 2010-2022 (Lunar iDXA, General Electric Medical Systems, Madison, WI). Athletes were instructed to wear comfortable athletics attire, remove all metal, and refrain from exercising and eating for 1 hour prior to scans. Standard screening and safety protocols were performed before and during the scan. Total bone mineral density (BMD), and BMD of the legs, pelvis, and spine were analyzed using the 14.10 version of the encore software (General Electric Healthcare Lunar, Madison, WI). A total of 140 athletes received at least >2 DXA scans (ALL analysis), with 35 athletes having >3 years (3Y analysis) of consecutive DXA data available. Linear mixed-models were used to determine changes in body composition measurements using R software (v. 4.4) with the nlme (v. 3.1-164), emmeans (v. 1.10.1) and sjPlot (v. 2.8.15) packages. RESULTS: In the ALL analysis, total BMD and spine BMD increased over time, without time effects for other outcomes (p