Differences in echocardiography, blood pressure, stroke volume, maximal power and profile of genes related to cardiac hypertrophy in elite road cyclists

Differences in exercise-induced blood pressure changes between young trained and untrained individuals

There are no studies assessing short‐term blood pressure (BP) changes induced by daily exercise load in young trained individuals. The authors enrolled 25 healthy, trained (mean age 19.7 ± 0.1 years, 36% female) and 26 healthy, untrained (mean age 20.4 ± 0.3 years, 50% female) individuals and measured BP after the Master two‐step test. Among them, 42 individuals underwent echocardiography after BP measurements to assess left ventricular mass index (LVMI). The baseline systolic BP (SBP) levels of trained and untrained individuals were 122.7 ± 2.9 versus 117.4 ± 1.5 mmHg, respectively (p = .016). Trained individuals showed a significant suppression of the SBP increase soon after exercise loads and lower SBP levels at 1, 2, and 3 min after exercise loads compared with untrained individuals. The peak SBP level over the study period was also significantly lower in trained individuals than in untrained individuals: 156.4 ± 3.3 versus 183.7 ± 5.2 mmHg (p < .001). Trained individuals showed significantly higher LVMI compared with untrained individuals: 129.4 versus 101.6 g/m² (p < .001). These findings demonstrated that trained individuals showed significant suppression of short‐term BP variability in response to by daily exercise loads and prompt SBP recovery from acute exercise loads compared with untrained individuals. Our results would be useful to understand short‐term BPV and LV hypertrophy induced by adaptive responses of the heart to regular exercise loads.