Introduction:

At present, the use of antioxidants in the sports field has increased. However, there is no conclusive evidence of the effect of these substances in improving the physical performance of athletes.

Objective:

To determine the effectiveness of antioxidant supplements in the improvement of athletic physical performance.

Material and Methods:

A bibliographic review was carried out through the search on online databases such as Pubmed, Scopus, the Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar search engine. Only original double-blind studies related to the intervention of an antioxidant supplement were included. The review period was from 2009 to December 2017.

Development:

A total of 1053 articles were identified, of which 33 met the inclusion criteria for the review. Regarding the type of supplement, 2 of them corresponded to vitamins, 9 to polyphenols, 11 to commercials, and the remaining 9 ones to several types. The historic period of the articles analyzed was 4.8 ± 2.4 years in terms of obsolescence, which was determined by the Burton and Kleber half-period and the Price index (5.5 and 61.0%, respectively).

Conclusions:

To date, there is no solid evidence that the intake of antioxidant supplements improves physical athletic performance. There are few positive results in some of the evaluated variables; for this reason, more evidence is required to elucidate the effect of antioxidant supplements.

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