Training-induced increased left ventricular trabeculation
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Increased left ventricular trabeculation in athletes – a marker of left ventricular non-compaction or a physiological epiphenomenon of increased cardiac preload?
IRAS ID
156948
Contact name
Sanjay Sharma
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Spongy heart muscle resulting from exercise training – Is it a sign of an inherited heart muscle disease or a form of heart muscle adaptation?
When spongy heart muscle is found in individuals on heart scans it is felt to represent a rare inherited heart muscle disease, which can lead to sudden death, strokes and heart failure. This spongy heart muscle is thought to be present from birth and causes problems later on in life.
Our group has studied a large number of athletes with heart scans and found that 8% have spongy heart muscle but no other signs of possessing an inherited heart disease. Athletes who were of African origin were more likely to have spongy heart muscle than athletes belonging to other ethnic groups.
Our group has also looked at what happens to the hearts of women during their pregnancies, when we know that the heart workload increases by approximately 40%. Here we have found that 8% of women with normal hearts develop spongy heart muscle that returns to normal after the pregnancy is over.
We think that spongy heart muscle is not necessarily a sign of inherited heart muscle disease but can develop in the hearts of certain people when they do a lot of exercise.
In order to prove this we aim to take a group of people aged 18-35 who do less than 2 hours of exercise a week and what watch happens when they exercise as people training to run a marathon. We will scan their hearts before and after training to see if they develop spongy heart muscle and if it goes away after training stops. We hope to find differences between training-induced spongy heart muscle and inherited heart muscle disease so that people having heart scans avoid getting labelled inappropriately.REC name
London - Queen Square Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/0086
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jan 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion