Subclinical cardiac involvement in student athletes after COVID-19 infection - Evaluation using feature tracking cardiac MRI strain analysis

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate subclinical cardiac dysfunction in student athletes after COVID-19 infection using feature tracking cardiac MRI strain analysis. METHODS: Student athletes with history of COVID-19 infection underwent cardiac MRI as part of screening before return to competitive play. Subjects were enrolled if they had no or mild symptoms, normal cardiac MRI findings with no imaging evidence of myocarditis. Feature tracking strain analysis was performed using short and long axis cine MRI images of athletes and a separate cohort of healthy controls. Differences between the cardiac strain parameters were statistically analyzed by Mann-Whitney U test. RESULTS: The study cohort included 122 athletes (49 females, mean age 20 years ± 1.5 standard deviations) who had a history of COVID-19, and 35 healthy controls (24 females, mean age 34 years ± 18 standard deviations). COVID-19 positive athletes had normal physiologic cardiac adaptations, including significantly higher left and right ventricle end-diastolic volumes (p = 0.00001) when compared to healthy controls. There was no significant difference between biventricular ejection fraction between athletes and control subjects (p > 0.05). Cardiac MRI parameters, including left ventricle global longitudinal strain (LV-GLS), global circumferential strain (LV-GCS), and global radial strain (LV-GRS) values were normal but slightly lower in athletes compared to controls. LV-GCS and LV-GRS were significantly lower in athletes compared to controls (p = 0.007 and p = 0.005 respectively), but there was no significant difference for LV-GLS (p = 0.088). CONCLUSION: In this study of 122 athletes, there was no evidence of subclinical myocardial alterations following recovery from COVID-19 found on cardiac MRI strain analysis. When compared to healthy controls, the competitive athletes had higher end-diastolic volume indices and reduced, albeit normal, strain values of LV-GLS, LV-GCS, and LV-GRS.