Black Athletes' Hearts May Differ From Those...(normal people as well as those with hear...),Health

Maron said he regarded the study results as an argument against routine cardiac screening of young athletes. "These data would suggest that that would be confusing if not chaotic," he said. "If you use the ECG as a screening tool, the ECG in blacks are more likely to be abnormal. That would raise the possibility of heart disease more frequently -- an unbalanced situation. Black athletes are more likely to be judged incorrectly to have heart disease."

Friedman said he favored such screening, but only if the differences among blacks and whites are taken into account.

A second study in the same issue of the journal found another black-white cardiac difference. The study, led by Dr. Sanjay Sharma of Kings College Hospital, London, compared 300 nationally ranked European black athletes from all sports with 300 matched white athletes and found a greater thickness of the wall of the left ventricle, the heart chamber that pumps blood to the body, in the black athletes. Such left ventricular hypertrophy, as it is called, is regarded as a sign of heart disease.

But the study also challenges that idea -- at least as far as healthy young athletes are concerned, Friedman said. "Black athletes hearts can be thicker than white athletes hearts and still be normal," he believes.

Finally, another study by Turkish and Spanish researchers pointed to a very real consequence for health from a long and punishing sports career.

Reporting in the June 3 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers found a high rate of pituitary hormone deficiency in Turkish boxers. The deficiency was greatest among those who had the longest careers in the ring, the researchers said, suggesting that head trauma may have caused the problem.

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