Cardiac troponin elevation in athletes: blame the musician and not the instrument

Cardiac troponins (cTn) are a heterogeneous family of intracellular structural proteins that are typically absent from the circulating blood pool in the absence of recent or on-going myocardial injury. The development and wide-spread dissemination of cTn testing revolutionised clinical medicine. Replacing historically useful but non-specific markers of tissue injury including creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase and aspartate transaminase, cTn testing enabled prompt and accurate diagnosis of myocardial injury. Prompt cTn testing, when coupled with the appropriate clinical scenario, represents the gold-standard method of documenting acute myocardial injury and, thus, plays an essential role in the diagnosis of acute coronary syndromes and other cardiovascular disease processes. However, not all elevated cTn is created equal and as with any diagnostic tool, pitfalls of clinical application deserve consideration. A wide body of literature documents the presence of detectable cTn in the blood following moderate to strenuous exercise in people without underlying heart disease.
Source: British Journal of Sports Medicine - Category: Sports Medicine Authors: Tags: BJSM Editorial Source Type: research