Creatine kinase and exercise

In their extensive review of changes in biomarkers following prolonged strenuous running, ¹ inter alia Bird et al. discuss creatine kinase (CK), and among the references quote Hoffman et al., ² whose study of the Western States Endurance run was published in 2012. One of the earliest, if not the earliest similar study, was 50 years ago. ³ Students from the London Medical Schools then competed in an annual London to Brighton run (53 miles). In the study, blood was collected at the start, approximately half way at Gatwick and from the survivors at Brighton, the latter showing an approximately 24-fold rise in CK with the assay used at that time. All the references in the review concerned with cardiac markers such as CK are post-2000. It poses an interesting question as to how far back in time, reviews in particular should go?

Declaration of conflicting interests

None declared.