Symptomatic bradyarrhythmias in the athlete - underlying mechanisms and treatments

Bradyarrhythmias including sinus bradycardia and atrioventricular (AV) block are frequently encountered in endurance athletes especially at night. While these are well tolerated by the young athlete, there is evidence that generally from the fifth decade of life onwards, such arrhythmias can degenerate into pathological symptomatic bradycardia requiring pacemaker therapy. For many years, athletic bradycardia and AV block have been attributed to high vagal tone, but work from our group has questioned this widely-held assumption and demonstrated a role for intrinsic electrophysiological remodelling of the sinus node and the AV node. In this article we argue that bradyarrhythmias in the veteran athlete arise from the cumulative effects of exercise training, the circadian rhythm and ageing on the electrical activity of the nodes. We consider contemporary strategies for the treatment of symptomatic bradyarrhythmias in athletes and highlight potential therapies resulting from our evolving mechanistic understanding of this phenomenon.