Atherosclerosis Vascular Damage in Elderly Athletes and Sedentary People

The objective of this study was to determine the degree of vascular atherosclerotic damage at the carotid and femoral levels in a group of subjects over sixty years old prac ticing endurance sports. Using high-resolution Doppler-color flow ultrasonography the authors carried out a vascular screening, comparing two distinct groups of subjects, the first consisting of 20 elderly male subjects (age 65.6 ±5.6 years) practicing endurance sports (runners) and the second of 20 subjects of the same gender and age (63.5 ±4.5 years), clinically healthy, but leading a sedentary life. All subjects were nonsmokers, nondiabetics, with normal lipid values and normal blood pressure. The authors examined the internal, external, and common carotid arteries, bilaterally, as well as the common femoral, deep femoral, and superficial femoral arteries of both legs. For each vessel they documented: (1) presence of plaques, (2) position and quantity of the plaques, (3) stenosis percentage produced by the plaques, (4) echographic structure of the plaques. In the group of sportsmen they calculated a global score of atherosclerotic damage of 5.58 ± 2.21. This is statistically significant (P