Alan Michael Nevill

University of Wolverhampton · Faculty of Education, Health and Wellbeing

Background Numerous tools based on electronic health record (EHR) data that predict risk of unscheduled care and mortality exist. These are often criticised due to lack of external validation, potential for low predictive ability and the use of thresholds that can lead to large numbers being escalated for assessment that would not have an adverse o...

Scaling, to remove the effects of body size, is an important methodological approach for enabling an equitable comparison of performance differences between individuals who vary in anthropometric characteristics. Many previous studies using scaling in sport have done so based on only one or two anthropometric characteristics, with only one study to...

Understanding the associations and possible mechanisms between Cardiorespiratory Fitness (CRF) and residential location is an important focus of public health research. This is a cross-sectional study carried out with 2250 students (6–17 years), from southern Brazil. In addition to age, sex, and body size measurements, we also recorded hemoglobin a...

This article aims to present growth curves for height, weight, and BMI of 95,000 Brazilian youths aged 6 to 17 years, including the five regions of the country, the Amazon region, and indigenous populations, and compare them with the World Health Organization (WHO) growth references. The final sample consisted of 52,729 boys and 42,731 girls from t...

Purpose To examine which key body size characteristics are common to success when performing a variety of physical fitness tests and, at the same time, to identify further characteristics that benefit only specific fitness tests. Methods Cross-sectional study carried out with data from 94,484 6–18 year olds. The physical fitness tests were: 1) 20-...

Purpose Childhood obesity is a major health concern and physical activity is commonly proposed as an intervention strategy to combat the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in young people. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of high-intensity, supervised, rowing ergometer training on maximal and submaximal rowing performanc...

Introduction The aim of this study was to explore which key somatic features are common to four swim strokes and medley, and specifically to identify which characteristics benefit only specific strokes. Methods The sample was composed of 130 swimmers (95 males aged 19.5 ± 2.9 years and 35 females aged 18.4 ± 2.8 years). A set of anthropometric var...

Introduction Innovative instruments have been designed to assess forearm rotation, an anatomically challenging motion to measure. This study assessed the concurrent validity, interrater reliability and responsiveness of a novel goniometer watch (GoWatch) to measure pure forearm rotation. The modified finger goniometer (MFG) was the criterion refere...

In order to manage and implement strategies to alleviate the symptoms of jet lag it is essential to assess the impact of jet lag in athletes. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of long haul eastward travel on elite athletes' (n = 7 elite national track cyclists; male n = 3, and female n = 4) sleep. The athletes’ sleep was monitored befo...

Background There has been a decline in children's physical fitness in recent decades. Such concerns are largely based on evidence from North America, Europe, and Asia. The current study describes the secular trend and variation (spread) in the physical fitness scores of young Brazilians from 2005 to 2022. Methods This study is a repeated, cross‐se...

Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a well-known and robust indicator of health in childhood, as well as a valuable predictor of all-cause mortality in adulthood. Understanding the associations and possible mechanisms between CRF and residential location is an important focus for public health research. A cross-sectional sample of 2250 children and...

The impact of early single sport participation among young people has received much attention, with both sport leaders and pediatricians advocating multi-sport participation at least until early adolescence. In this study we explored the association between family socioeconomic status and level of Irish youth specialization in sport. We relied on d...

Background: Poor sleep and resultant under-recovery can negatively impact training adaptations, increase the risk of injury and reduce subsequent performance. Due to the 'food first' approach adopted by many athletes, there is scope for investigation of 'functional food' based interventions (i.e., kiwifruit contains melatonin which plays a role in...

Elite athletes and their support staff are often required to travel for international competitions all over the globe, however little is known about their experiences of long-haul (LH) travel and its perceived effects on performance. The aim of this study was to explore elite athletes’ and support staffs’ perception of symptoms experienced followin...

Background This study aimed to (i) provide normative data for measures of physical fitness (PF) (i.e., muscle strength, muscle power, linear sprint speed) in 8- to 14-year-old Tunisian children and (ii) to examine sex and age group differences in these measures.MethodsA total of 597 subjects (aged 8~14）participated in this study, the normative data...

Background There has been a rise in the participation, professionalism, and profile of female sports in recent years. Sprinting ability is an important quality for successful athletic performance in many female team sports. However, much of the research to date on improving sprint performance in team sports is derived from studies with male partici...

The aims of this study were to: (1) analyze and compare the stroke kinematics between junior and senior elite male swimmers in every section of the race during the 50-m freestyle event, and; (2) identify stroke frequency (SF)–stroke length (SL) combinations on swim speed independently for junior and senior swimmers in each section of the 50-m frees...

Objectives: To a) demonstrate that adopting 'at risk' waist-to-height ratio (WHTR) cut-off points, recently approved by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the United States Department of Defense (USDoD), will unfairly penalize shorter individuals and will be too lenient for taller individuals, b) to confirm that waist cir...

It remains unclear whether a total exposure to air pollution (AP) is associated with an increased risk of dementia. Little is known on the association in low- and middle-income countries. Two cohort studies in China (in Anhui cohort 1402 older adults aged ≥ 60 followed up for 10 years; in Zhejiang cohort 6115 older adults followed up for 5 years) w...

The objective of this study was to holistically examine the impact of long-haul transmeridian travel (LHTT) on perceptual, mood, sleep and physiological markers in Olympic team support staff travelling to Japan for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. An observational descriptive study design was used. Nine support staff members of the Irish Olympic team...

This study confirmed that without crowds there was no home advantage in association football during the COVID-19 2020-21 season. Consequently, we sort to answer the obvious question, ‘Are crowds influencing referees’ behaviour?’ The number of home and away red and yellow cards awarded in the ‘no crowd’ COVID-19 2020-21 season (all 4 top English div...

Objectives The association between impaired digital provision, access and health outcomes has not been systematically studied. The Wolverhampton Digital ENablement programme (WODEN) is a multiagency collaborative approach to determine and address digital factors that may impact on health and social care in a single deprived multiethnic health econo...

Despite a clear distinction between aerobic and muscle strengthening (MS) components in the physical activity guidelines, public health surveillance has largely focused only on aerobic components, limiting the reach of epidemiological research on the physical activity guidelines. Hence, this study investigated the association between adherence to b...

The purpose of the current study was to identify the most appropriate “body shape” associated with six athletic performance (AP) tests, using three-dimensional allometry (height (HT), body mass (M), and waist circumference (WC)), in a sample of Brazilian children and adolescents. The sample consisted of 11018 Brazilian children/adolescents (5147 bo...

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has just released its latest guidelines to assess and predict health risk, such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease. Their latest advice is “Keep the size of your waist to less than half of your height”. We believe this advice is flawed and will seriously and unfairly pena...

French rowing federation reduced the competition distance to 1,500 and 1,000 m in rowers under 16- (U16) and 14-year-old (U14) respectively, to prepare them progressively to the Olympic 2,000 m distance in under 18-year-old (U18). This study aimed to check the hypothesis that relative aerobic (%EAe) and anaerobic (%EAn) energy contributions would b...

Literature lacks evidence about the physiological recovery of tennis players between points. This study aimed to: (i) verify the heart rate (HR) and oxygen uptake (V̇O 2 ) recovery variance in young tennis players from the end of a tennis drill until the 25-s mark and onwards (65-s limit), performed at several intensities, and (ii) test the curve f...

Background Few studies have investigated the optimal anthropometric index associated with potential cardio-metabolic risk. Using direct measures of standing height, body mass, and waist circumference, we sought to identify the optimal index for detecting cardio-metabolic risk associated with diabetes and hypertension in a nationally representative...

Background Gross motor coordination (GMC) is fundamental to the harmonious development of physical skills during the growth of children. This research aimed to explore the developmental changes in GMC during childhood, having controlled for the differences in children’s body size and shape using a longitudinal, allometric scaling methodology. Meth...

Background & Aims Healthcare service provision in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is often designed to meet targets set by healthcare providers rather than those of patients. It is unclear whether this meets the needs of patients, as assessed by patients themselves. This nationwide study assessed patients' experience of IBD and the healthcare they...

Background: Obesity classifications vary globally and the impact of older age adiposity on incident diabetes has not been well-studied. Methods: We examined a random sample of 2,809 participants aged ≥60 years in China, who were free of diabetes at baseline and were followed up for up to 10 years to document diabetes (n=178). The incidence of di...

Introduction: This study aimed to: 1) determine swimming velocity based on a set of anthropometric, kinematic, and kinetic variables, and; 2) understand the stroke frequency (SF)–stroke length (SL) combinations associated with swimming velocity and propulsion in young sprint swimmers. Methods: 38 swimmers (22 males: 15.92 ± 0.75 years; 16 females:...

This study aimed to develop the optimal allometric body size/ shape and a biological maturity model that predicted the change of direction (CoD) mean speed performance in youth male soccer players. One-hundred-fifteen youth soccer players (age: 12.4 ± 1.3 years) participated in this study. The 505 test was used to assess CoD mean speed performance....

Background and Aims There is growing evidence that Body Mass Index (BMI) is unfit for purpose. Waist circumference (WC) indices appear to be the preferred alternative, although it is not clear which WC index is optimal at predicting cardio-metabolic risk (CMR) and associated health outcomes. Methods and Results We obtained a stratified random prob...

Children recover faster than adults in repeated sprints, but it is unclear if their aerobic responses differ. Purpose This study tested the hypothesis that aerobic response (VO2) during repeated sprints is greater in preadolescent boys than in men. Further, this study compared normalization with conventional ratio-scaling and scaling with the use...

This study holistically examined the effects of long-haul transmeridian travel (LHTT) on physiological, perceptual, sleep and performance markers in nine international level swimmers preparing for the 2019 FINA World Long Course Championships in Gwangju, South Korea. Baseline (BL) measurements were taken over two days during the week before a long-...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia. Impact of air pollution (AP) on the risk of AD is unclear. It is unknown which air pollutants are independently associated with AD and whether fish consumption mitigated the association. We carried out a community-based cohort of 6115 participants aged ≥60 years in China to examine the a...

Beach handball is characterized by high- and low-intensity efforts on an unstable surface. Players are expected to display high levels of physical performance on sand, though there are no data concerning success in elite players. Purpose: This study aimed to address anthropometric, fitness, and sport-specific skills components in beach handball,...

Background Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) is a recognised biomarker for acute kidney injury (AKI).This study investigated the impact of balanced forced-diuresis using RenalGuard® system (RG), in reducing acute kidney injury (AKI) rates and the associated NGAL levels (6-h post-CPB plasma level) post adult cardiac surgery with card...

Introduction: Handgrip strength (HGS) is an important indicator of health. Because HGS is strongly associated with body size, most investigators normalize HGS for some measure of body size as a more sensitive indicator of strength within a population. We aimed to (1) identify the optimal body size dimension to remove (normalize) HGS for difference...

Objectives Forced-diuresis during cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) can be associated with significant electrolyte shifts. This study reports on the serum electrolyte changes during balanced forced-diuresis with the RenalGuard® system (RG) during CPB. Methods Patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)—(history of diabetes &/or anaemia, e-GFR 20–60 m...

This study investigated if music tempo can prompt a desired walking cadence, and if music can provide a stimulus to regulate physical activity intensity in a longitudinal physical activity intervention with free-living adults. Overweight adults (n = 37; 94.26 ± 17.11 kg; 49.63 ± 12.37 years) were randomly assigned to an intervention (IG, n = 17) or...

Body mass index (BMI) is thought to reflect excess adiposity in both youth and adults alike. However, the association between BMI and fatness varies, especially as children grow into adults. Thus, the present study sought to address this issue by characterizing how BMI reflects age and sex differences in body fatness in 7-16-year-old children. Met...

This study evaluated the effectiveness of strategies used to recruit and retain overweight, inactive adults with intermediate hyperglycaemia (IHG) to a novel walking programme. Participant compliance to the nine-month randomised controlled trial (RCT) is also presented. Inactive overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2) adults (N = 42; n = 19 male, n = 23 female...

Background and objectives: Doubts have been raised concerning the validity of the 20-m shuttle-run test (20 mSRT) as a predictor of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) in youth based on Léger's equation/model. An alternative allometric model has been published recently that is thought to provide, not only a superior fit (criterion validity) but also a...

This study aimed to investigate the association between training load indices and Upper Respiratory Tract Infection (URTI) across different lag periods in elite soccer players. Internal training load was collected from 15 elite soccer players over one full season (40 weeks). Acute, chronic, Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio (ACWR), Exponentially Weighte...

Dance injury research has mainly focused on ballet and modern dance with little data on musical theatre dancers. The purpose was to assess the incidence and severity of injuries in a musical theatre dance college over a 5-year period; 198 pre-professional musical theatre dancers (3 cohorts on a 3-year training course) volunteered for the study; 21...

Identifying vulnerable groups and/or individuals’ cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is an important challenge for clinicians/researchers alike. To quantify CRF accurately, the assessment of several variables is now standard practice including maximal oxygen uptake (VO 2 ) and ventilatory efficiency, the latter assessed using the minute ventilation/ca...

Background The IBD Benchmarking Tool, comprising an online Service Self-Assessment and Patient Survey, has provided a unique and comprehensive picture of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) care across the UK. The aim was to evaluate current local service performance to facilitate future quality improvement. Methods The IBD Patient Survey (PS) ran fr...

Background Speed agility is considered as the whole assessment of speed of movement, agility and coordination. The 10x4m test has been broadly used to evaluate physical fitness and overall health in children of developmental ages. A myriad of studies have investigated the ecology of speed agility (SA). However, body dimensions are rarely appraised,...

Background: Athletes maintain a balance between stress and recovery and adopt recovery modalities that manage fatigue and enhance recovery and performance. Optimal TST is subject to individual variance. However, 7-9 h sleep is recommended for adults, while elite athletes may require more quality sleep than non-athletes. Methods: A total of 338 (...

Regular participation in strength and conditioning activities positively correlates with health-related benefits in sports (team and individual). Maturity offset (MO) is a recognized parameter in fitness outcome assessment. The aims of the present study are to analyze cross-sectional allometric development of motor performances in a sample of adole...

The effects of two high-intensity interval training (HIIT) protocols on regional body composition and fat oxidation in men with obesity were compared using a parallel randomized design. Sixteen inactive males (age, 38.9 ± 7.3 years; body fat, 31.8 ± 3.9%; peak oxygen uptake, VO2peak, 30.9 ± 4.1 mL/kg/min; all mean ± SD) were randomly assigned to ei...

The purpose of the current article was to use allometric models to identify the best body size descriptors and other anthropometric variables, body composition, and offset maturity that might be associated with the youngsters’ 50m personal-best (PB) swim speeds (m·s⁻¹). Eighty-five competitive swimmers (male, n=50; 13.5±1.8 y; female, n=35; 12.6±1....

Background Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) is a recognised biomarker for acute kidney injury (AKI).This study investigated the impact of balanced forced-diuresis using RenalGuard® system (RG), in reducing acute kidney injury (AKI) rates and the associated NGAL levels (6-hour post-CPB plasma level) post adult cardiac surgery with c...

Information regarding urban-rural differences in health indicators are scarce in Brazil. This study sought to identify rural-urban differences in cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and cardiometabolic risk (CMR) in Brazilian children and adolescents whilst controlling for the important confounding variables including social economic status (SES). This...

Objectives To describe variations in Covid-19 outcomes in relation to local risks within a well-defined but diverse single-city area . Design Observational study of COVID-19 outcomes using quality-assured integrated data from a single UK hospital contextualised to its feeder-population and associated factors (comorbidities, ethnicity, age, depri...

Purpose: Recently, doubts have been raised concerning the validity of the 20-m shuttle run test (20mSRT) to predict cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) in youth. Despite these doubts, authors continue to provide powerful evidence that CRF can be predicted reliably using the 20mSRT albeit using contrasting models. Therefore, we aimed to compare a new l...

The present study aims to identify the optimal body-size/shape and maturity characteristics associated with superior fitness test performances having controlled for body-size, sex, and chronological-age differences. The sample consisted of 597 Tunisian children (396 boys and 201 girls) aged 8 to 15 years. Three sprint speeds recorded at 10, 20 and...

The present study aims to identify the optimal body-size/shape and maturity characteristics associated with superiour fitness test performances having controlled for body-size, sex, and chronological-age differences. The sample consisted of 597 Tunisian children (396 boys and 201 girls) aged 8 to 15 years. Three sprint speeds recorded at 10-, 20- a...