Cardiac Troponin Release after Exercise in Healthy Young Athletes: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Cardiac troponin (cTn) is a recognized marker used to assess damage to the heart muscle. Actual research has indicated that the levels of cTn increase after doing exercise in individuals who are in good health, and this is believed to be a result of a normal cellular process rather than a pathological one. The main goal of this study was to investigate the evidence of a postexercise release of cTn in child and adolescent athletes (6–17.9 years old) of different ages, sex, and sports disciplines. The Web of Science, MEDLINE, and Scopus databases were used to conduct the research up to March 2023. Three hundred and twenty-eight records were identified from the databases, however, only twenty-three studies were included in the review after being screened and quality-assessed by two independent authors. The gender, age of the participants, maturational status, and training level of the participants, the timing of sample collection, the exercise modality, and the number of participants with values above the cut-off reference were the data analyzed. Males, older young people, and individual sports seemed to have higher levels of serum cTn after practice exercise. Different methodologies, analyzers, and cut-off reference values make it difficult to compare the data among studies.

This research was funded by the State Program for Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to the Challenges of Society, within the framework of the State Plan for R+D+I 2017–2020. The title of the project is: “Evaluación de diversos parámetros de salud y niveles de actividad física en la escuela primaria y secundaria”, grant number PID2020-117932RB-I00. The consolidated research group is the Human Movement Generalitat de Catalunya, 021 SGR 01619.