The impact of an endurance training programme on exercise-induced cardiac biomarker release

We evaluated the influence of a 14-wk endurance running program on the exercise-induced release of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hscTnT) and NH2-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP). Fifty-eight untrained participants were randomized to supervised endurance exercise (14 wk, 3–4 days/wk, 120–240 min/wk, 65–85% of maximum heart rate) or a control group. At baseline and after the training program, hs-cTnT and NT-proBNP were assessed before and 5 min, 1 h, 3 h, 6 h, 12 h, and 24 h after a 60-min maximal running test. Before training, hs-cTnT was significantly elevated in both groups with acute exercise (P , 0.0001) with no between-group differences. There was considerable heterogeneity in peak hs-cTnT concentration with the upper reference limit exceeded in 71% of the exercise tests. After training, both baseline and postexercise hs-cTnT were significantly higher compared with pretraining and the response of the control group (P 5 0.008). Acute exercise led to a small but significant increase in NT-proBNP, but this was not mediated by training (P 5 0.121). In summary, a controlled endurance training intervention resulted in higher pre- and postexercise values of hscTnT with no changes in NT-proBNP.This study was supported by the DEP 2010-16767 grants from the National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation (R + D + i) MICIN