This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Exercise slowed muscle wasting from age, HF
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
HF patients who participated in supervised endurance training for 4 weeks experienced reductions in muscle ring finger-1 levels. This finding suggests that exercise blocks ubiquitin-proteasome system activation in younger and older patients with chronic HF.
Researchers for the Leipzig Exercise Intervention in Chronic Heart Failure and Aging (LEICA) study analyzed 60 patients with chronic HF and 60 healthy controls (30 patients aged ≤55 years; 30 patients aged ≥65 years in both groups) from September 2005 to August 2008. Patients were randomly assigned to 4 weeks of supervised endurance training or usual care. The intervention included four training sessions of 20 minutes of aerobic exercise per day, 5 days per week, plus one 60-minute group exercise session. Researchers obtained vastus lateralis muscle biopsies before and after the intervention, and the muscle ring finger-1, muscle atrophy F-box and expressions of cathepsin-L were measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction and confirmed by Western blot.
Patients with chronic HF had significantly higher muscle ring finger-1 expression at baseline compared with healthy controls (624 relative units vs. 401 relative units; P=.007). After 4 weeks of supervised endurance training, muscle ring finger-1 mRNA expression was reduced by –32.8% (P=.02) in chronic HF patients aged 55 years or younger and by –37% (P<.05) in chronic HF patients aged at least 65 years.
In both younger and older patients, exercise training was associated with increased muscle force endurance and oxygen intake. HF patients aged younger than 55 years increased their peak oxygen uptake by 25% and those aged 65 years and older increased it by 27%. The strength of participants’ leg muscles was measured before and after the exercise. Younger and older HF patients increased muscle strength after the 4-week exercise regimen. Muscle size was unaffected.
These findings offer a possible treatment to the muscle breakdown and wasting associated with HF and suggest that exercise is therapeutic even in elderly HF patients. The findings also suggest an avenue for drug development to slow muscle breakdown in HF patients, according to a press release.
“Exercise switches off the muscle-wasting pathways and switches on pathways involved in muscle growth, counteracting muscle loss and exercise intolerance in HF patients,” Stephan Gielen, MD, deputy director of cardiology at the University Hospital, Martin-Luther-University of Halle, Germany, stated in the release.
Disclosure: Dr. Gielen and the researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts