The Status of Inflammatory Factors Involved in Coronary Artery Disease in Veteran Football Players

Homocysteine, C-reactive protein (CRP), fibrinogen, and lipoprotein (a) (LPA) are four novel cardiovascular risk factors.

The purpose of this study was to compare the serum levels of these substances in veteran football players and nonathletes.

The subjects of this study were 16 male orthopedic veterans assigned to the two control and experimental groups. The age range was 40 to 50 years old. The athlete group was players of North Khorasan veterans’ team of futsal that trained regularly in the past six months. Trainings of the athlete group were three sessions per week that each session consisted of a warm-up, technical, tactical, and fitness trainings and cooling down. Non-athlete subjects had no regular trainings in the past six months. After 12 hours of fasting, serum levels of dependent variables were evaluated. Independent t-test was used for computing the mean differences of dependent variables between the two groups.

The findings showed that mean levels of homocysteine (P = 0.034), fibrinogen (P = 0.001) and LPA (P = 0.022) were lower in the experimental group compared to the control group (P ≤ 0.05). There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of CRP mean levels (P = 0.072).

Generally, orthopedic veterans can prevent cardiac events through regular futsal training because this type of training may reduce the levels of homocysteine, fibrinogen and LPA.