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The Female Athlete's Heart: Facts and Fallacies.

Colombo, CSSS; Finocchiaro, G (2018) The Female Athlete's Heart: Facts and Fallacies. Curr Treat Options Cardiovasc Med, 20 (12). p. 101. ISSN 1092-8464 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-018-0699-7
SGUL Authors: Finocchiaro, Gherardo

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Abstract

Purpose of the review For many years, competitive sport has been dominated by men. Recent times have witnessed a significant increase in women participating in elite sports. As most studies investigated male athletes, with few reports on female counterparts, it is crucial to have a better understanding on physiological cardiac adaptation to exercise in female athletes, to distinguish normal phenotypes from potentially fatal cardiac diseases. This review reports on cardiac adaptation to exercise in females. Recent findings Recent studies show that electrical, structural, and functional cardiac changes due to physiological adaptation to exercise differ in male and female athletes. Women tend to exhibit eccentric hypertrophy, and while concentric hypertrophy or concentric remodeling may be a normal finding in male athletes, it should be evaluated carefully in female athletes as it may be a sign of pathology. Although few studies on veteran female athletes are available, women seem to be affected by atrial fibrillation, coronary atherosclerosis, and myocardial fibrosis less than male counterparts. Summary Males and females exhibit many biological, anatomical, and hormonal differences, and cardiac adaptation to exercise is no exception. The increasing participation of women in sports should stimulate the scientific community to develop large, longitudinal studies aimed at a better understanding of cardiac adaptation to exercise in female athletes.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Keywords: Cardiac remodeling, Female athletes, Sudden cardiac death, Cardiovascular System & Hematology
SGUL Research Institute / Research Centre: Academic Structure > Molecular and Clinical Sciences Research Institute (MCS)
Journal or Publication Title: Curr Treat Options Cardiovasc Med
ISSN: 1092-8464
Language: eng
Dates:
DateEvent
December 2018Published
3 November 2018Published Online
Publisher License: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0
PubMed ID: 30390143
Go to PubMed abstract
URI: https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/110845
Publisher's version: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-018-0699-7

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