Recreational marathon running does not cause exercise-induced left ventricular hypertrabeculation.

BACKGROUND

Marathon running in novices represents a natural experiment of short-term cardiovascular remodeling in response to running training. We examine whether this stimulus can produce exercise-induced left ventricular (LV) trabeculation.

METHODS

Sixty-eight novice marathon runners aged 29.5 ± 3.2 years had indices of LV trabeculation measured by echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging 6 months before and 2 weeks after the 2016 London Marathon race, in a prospective longitudinal study.

RESULTS

After 17 weeks unsupervised marathon training, indices of LV trabeculation were essentially unchanged. Despite satisfactory inter-observer agreement in most methods of trabeculation measurement, criteria defining abnormally hypertrabeculated cases were discordant with each other. LV hypertrabeculation was a frequent finding in young, healthy individuals with no subject demonstrating clear evidence of a cardiomyopathy.

CONCLUSION

Training for a first marathon does not induce LV trabeculation. It remains unclear whether prolonged, high-dose exercise can create de novo trabeculation or expose concealed trabeculation. Applying cut off values from published LV noncompaction cardiomyopathy criteria to young, healthy individuals risks over-diagnosis.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The study funders and supporters had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.