Study: Exercise
Slows Muscle Wasting from Age, Heart Failure
Many physicians—and insurance companies—still believe that cardiac
rehabilitation does not really help in old age. This study clearly falsifies
this belief,” said Stephan Gielen, M.D., lead co-author.
·
May 12, 2012
Exercise can counteract muscle
breakdown, increase strength, and reduce inflammation caused by aging and heart
failure , according to new research in Circulation, an American Heart
Association journal.
The benefits for heart failure
patients are similar to those for anyone who exercises: there’s less
muscle-wasting, and their bodies become conditioned to handle more exercise.
The age of the patients didn’t matter, either, researchers found. “Many
physicians—and insurance companies—still believe that cardiac rehabilitation
does not really help in old age. This study clearly falsifies this belief,”
said Stephan Gielen, M.D., lead co-author and Deputy Director of Cardiology at
the University Hospital, Martin-Luther-University of Halle, Germany.
Between 2005 and 2008, researchers
recruited 60 heart-failure patients and 60 healthy volunteers. Half of each
group was 55 years and younger, and the other half was 65 years and older,
resulting in an average age difference of 20 years between the groups. Half the
participants in each age group were randomly assigned to four weeks of
supervised aerobic training or no exercise.
Researchers took muscle biopsies of
all participants before and after the intervention.
In both age groups, four training
sessions of 20 minutes of aerobic exercise per day, five days a week plus one
60 minute group exercise session was associated with increased muscle force
endurance and oxygen uptake. Heart failure patients 55 and under increased
their peak oxygen uptake by 25 percent, while those 65 and over increased it by
27 percent.
Using biopsy results, researchers
found that levels of a muscle protein indicating muscle breakdown, known as
MuRF1, were higher in participants with heart failure than in their healthier
counterparts. However, exercise reduced MuRF1 and reduced muscle inflammation,
measured by levels of a protein called TNF-alpha. The strength of participants’
leg muscles was measured before and after the exercise. Younger and older heart
failure patients increased muscle strength after the four-week exercise
regimen. Muscle size was unaffected.
These findings offer a possible
treatment to the muscle breakdown and wasting associated with heart failure and
suggest that exercise is therapeutic even in elderly heart failure patients.
The findings also suggest an avenue for drug development to slow muscle
breakdown in heart failure patients.
“Exercise switches off the
muscle-wasting pathways and switches on pathways involved in muscle growth, counteracting
muscle loss and exercise intolerance in heart failure patients,” Gielen said. According
to the American Heart Association, about 5,700,000 Americans age 20 and older
have heart failure. “Over the last three decades, hospital admissions for heart
failure have increased fourfold and will continue to do so, due chiefly to the
aging of the population,” Gielen said. Estimates of costs vary, but are in the
tens of billions of dollars per year in the United States alone, researchers
said.
http://ohsonline.com/articles/2012/05/12/study-exercise-slows-muscle-wasting-from-age-heart-failure.aspx
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