Effect of 16 weeks six a side recreational football on serum immunoglobulin and white blood cells in untrained males

Objectives: Present study examined how 16 weeks of six a side supervised recreational football affected serum immunoglobulin and white blood cells in untrained males. Methods/Analysis: We selected 27 untrained males having mean age (18.87±.79) years. These participants were then randomly allocated to two groups; football (n = 12) and control group (n = 15). Sixteen weeks of supervised recreational football training was offered to football group. Football sessions were conducted two times a week with 30min duration. Analysis of Covariance was employed to find any difference in two groups after 16 weeks of football training. Findings: Significant increase was seen after 16 weeks in total white blood cell count (P = 0.001), eosinophil (P = 0.006) and basophil (P = 0.005), while no significant improvement was observed in Neutrophil (P = 0.797), lymphocytes (P = 0.820), IgA (P = .158), IgG (P = .077) and IgM (P= .655). Monocytes and eosinophil counts decreased significantly whereas basophil counts increased significantly post football training. Novelty/Improvement: Sixteen weeks of supervised recreation football training was effective in increasing total WBC count in untrained males. Our training was vigorous in nature as indicated by high average heart rate during the training sessions. Further, recreation football could not affect serum immunoglobulin significantly but there was some substantive increase in IgG levels.