Ventilatory endurance in athletes: a family study.

Endurance athletes possess superior ability to sustain high ventilation. However, it remains unknown if this high ventilatory endurance is an effect of training. As one approach to this question, we compared the breathing endurance of eight distance runners with that of eight of their siblings who were untrained. In two separate tests involving seated isocapnic hyperpnea, the athletes had greater ability to sustain high VE than did their brothers and sisters. In the first test, VE was voluntarily incremented by 30 l/min each 4 min. Before exhaustion, the athletes reached a VE that was a significantly greater fraction of their 12-s maximal voluntary ventilation than did the untrained siblings (75 vs. 62%; P less than 0.01). In the second test, 80% of the 12-s MVV was sustained until exhaustion. Endurance times for the athletes doubled those of the untrained siblings (7 vs. 3 min; P less than 0.05). The failure of elevated ventilatory endurance to occur in family clusters suggests that it may primarily result from training.