Age-related decline in mitral peak diastolic velocities is unaffected in well-trained runners

Abstract

Lifelong endurance running was not found to be associated with major attenuation of the age-related decline in diastolic function at rest or during exercise.

Long-term athletic training does not alter age-associated reductions of left-ventricular mid-diastolic lengthening or expansion at rest

“…Comparable resting systolic function, clearly differentiated age-associated decline in global diastolic function, that is not attenuated with chronic exercise concurs with the previous work (Molmen et al 2012 ; Carrick-Ranson et al 2012 ; Olsen et al 2015 ). In contrast to Beaumont et al ( 2018 ), O T did not demonstrate superior trans-mitral function than their age-matched untrained counterparts.…”

Decline in effort capacity with age: Echocardiographic stress analysis in the elderly

“…13 The only effects of aging on the heart at rest include a decline in diastolic function, characterized by reduced peak early mitral inflow velocity (E) and peak early mitral annular tissue Doppler (TD) velocity (E′), with a compensatory increase in late (atrial phase) peak inflow velocity (A). 14,15 This decline is associated with an increase in the E/E′ ratio above normal values, indicative of higher filling pressures at rest. [16][17][18][19]…”

Cardiac Response to Exercise in Normal Ageing: What Can We Learn from Masters Athletes?

“…Long term exercise does not prevent the gradual decline in resting global diastolic function associated with ageing, as measured by conventional Doppler mitral inflow or tissue velocities [30-38]. Nevertheless, when compared with controls of the same age, older (>45 years) endurance-trained athletes have shown superior diastolic function with greater E [19, 37-39], e’ [19, 22, 36, 40], lower late mitral inflow velocity (A) [34-36, 40-44], lower late mitral annular tissue velocity (a’) [35, 45] and collectively, greater e’/a’ [19, 35, 40] and E/A (Table 1 ).…”

“…Therefore, it is possible that superior diastolic function in older athletes may be mediated, in part, by a lower heart rate and/or (to a lesser extent) higher plasma volume. In contrast, a body of evidence disputes a beneficial influence of endurance based exercise on e’ [29, 35, 38, 41, 45] or global diastolic function, expressed as E/A (Table 1 ) or e’/a’ [31, 37, 45], between age-matched athletes and controls. Thus, it is unclear at present whether exercise is a useful mitigant of the inevitable age-related decline in global diastolic function when determined by the profiling of mitral inflow and tissue velocities.…”

“…The unidimensional motion of tissue velocities does not provide a full description of the LV movements during diastole [38], the assessment of LV rotational mechanics, namely untwisting, can provide further insight into the intrinsic function of the heart at various stages of the cardiac cycle. Recently, studies of middle-aged (~54-57 years) male athletes [35, 55] reported no training effect on E or e’ at rest but did identify a significantly greater percentage of untwisting during IVRT.…”