ArticleEuropean journal of epidemiology2018
The heart of the matter: years-saved from cardiovascular and cancer deaths in an elite athlete cohort with over a century of follow-up.
Article in European journal of epidemiology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Measurement Properties of Aerobic Capacity Measures in Neuromuscular Diseases: A Systematic Review.Journal of rehabilitation medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Health Consequences of an Elite Sporting Career: Long-Term Detriment or Long-Term Gain? A Meta-Analysis of 165,000 Former Athletes.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2021Pooled it
- Early-life endurance sports lowers frailty and falls in former male athletes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Health among Retired Great Britain's Olympic Athletes: A cross-sectional Study of Disease and Multimorbidity.Sports medicine - open · 2025Article
- Activity and social correlates of physical fitness in Lithuanian schoolchildren.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Biomarkers of aging: from molecules and surrogates to physiology and function.Physiological reviews · 2025Review
- Is Quality of Life a Reason Related to the Retirement of Professional Male Soccer Players?Translational sports medicine · 2025Article
- Comparison of cancer and all-cause death rates of Australian rock and pop musicians, footballers, cricketers and the general population.JSAMS plus · 2024Article
- Sheffield Shield Cricketers Live Longer than the Age-Matched General Australian Male Population.Indian journal of orthopaedics · 2023Article
- The molecular athlete: exercise physiology from mechanisms to medals.Physiological reviews · 2023Review
- Integrating relative survival in multi-state models-a non-parametric approach.Statistical methods in medical research · 2022Article
- Sports activities at a young age decrease hypertension risk-The J-FitPhysiological reports · 2022Article
- Comment on: "Potential long-term health problems associated with ultra-endurance running: a narrative review".Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2022Article
- Lower fitness levels, higher fat-to-lean mass ratios, and lower cardiorespiratory endurance are more likely to affect the body mass index of Saudi children and adolescents.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Rationale and design of the PROspective ATHletic Heart (Pro@Heart) study: long-term assessment of the determinants of cardiac remodelling and its clinical consequences in endurance athletes.BMJ open sport & exercise medicine · 2022Article
- Health conditions among retired professional footballers: a scoping review.BMJ open sport & exercise medicine · 2022Article
- "Fitness and Fatness" in Children and Adolescents: An Italian Cross-Sectional Study.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Secular trends in health-related physical fitness among 11-14-year-old Croatian children and adolescents from 1999 to 2014.Scientific reports · 2021Observational
- Functional endurance capacity is associated with multiple other physical fitness components in 7-14-year-olds: a cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2021Article
- Heads-Up: Risk-Specific Neurodegenerative Mortality and Years-Saved Analysis on the US Olympian Cohort.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
To quantify the years of life saved from cardiovascular (CVD), cancer and overall deaths among elite athletes according to their main type of physiological effort performed in the Olympic Games. All French athletes participating in the Games from 1912 to 2012, with vital status validated and cause of death (if concerned) identified by the national registries were included (n = 2814, 455 died) and classified according to 6 groups of effort: POWER (continuous effort < 45 s); INTERMEDIATE (45 s ≤ continuous effort < 600 s); ENDURANCE (continuous effort ≥ 600 s); POLYVALENT (participating in different events entering different classifications), INTERMITTENT (intermittent effort, i.e. team sports); PRECISION (targeting events). The theoretical years-lost method was adapted to calculate gains in longevity (years-saved) according to specific-risks under the competing risks model and was implemented in R software. Considering overall-deaths, all groups significantly saved, on average, 6.5 years of life (95% CI 5.8-7.2) compared to the general population. This longevity advantage is mainly driven by a lower risk of cancer which, isolated, contributed to significantly save 2.3 years of life (95% CI 1.2-1.9) on average in each group. The risk of CVD-related mortality in the ENDURANCE and PRECISION groups is not significantly different from the general population. The other groups significantly saved, on average, 1.6 years of life (95% CI 1.2-1.9) from CVD death. The longevity benefits in elite athletes are associated with the type of effort performed during their career, mainly due to differences on the CVD-risk of death.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.