Does lifelong endurance exercise associate with myocardial fibrosis and altered cardiac morphology in veteran male athletes?
Lifelong endurance exercise in veteran male athletes is associated with an unexpectedly high prevalence of myocardial fibrosis, which correlates with training history.
This study examined the cardiac structure and function of a unique cohort of documented lifelong, competitive endurance veteran athletes (>50 yr). Twelve lifelong veteran male endurance athletes mean ± SD (range) age: 56 ± 6 yr (50-67), 20 age-matched veteran controls 60 ± 5 yr; (52-69), and 17 younger male endurance athletes 31 ± 5 yr (26-40) without significant comorbidities underwent cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging to assess cardiac morphology and function, as well as CMR imaging with late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) to assess myocardial fibrosis. Lifelong veteran athletes had smaller left (LV) and right ventricular (RV) end-diastolic and end-systolic volumes (P 0.05), but was significantly associated with the number of years spent training (P 50 miles) marathons (P < 0.007) completed. An unexpectedly high prevalence of myocardial fibrosis (50%) was observed in healthy, asymptomatic, lifelong veteran male athletes, compared with zero cases in age-matched veteran controls and young athletes. These data suggest a link between lifelong endurance exercise and myocardial fibrosis that requires further investigation.
Wilson et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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