Chest
Original ResearchCOPDSignificant Improvement in Arterial Stiffness After Endurance Training in Patients With COPD
Section snippets
Subjects
Seventeen patients were included in the study. Patient characteristics are reported in Table 1. Inclusion criteria were: (1) moderate to severe COPD14; (2) free of respiratory exacerbation within the preceding 3 months; (3) free of diabetes, defined as fasting venous plasma glucose level ≤ 7.0 mmol/L; and (4) ability to perform exercise training. The research protocol was approved by the institutional ethics committee, and a signed informed consent was obtained from each subject.
Study Design
Consecutive
Patient Characteristics at Baseline
Patient characteristics are presented in Table 1. At baseline, trained and untrained groups were similar for age, BMI, pulmonary function, blood gases, and walking distance. No significant difference was found between groups in terms of BP, TAS, usCRP, metabolic parameters, and functional capacity. None of the patients reported an acute exacerbation during the study period and the medications remained constant in the two groups during the entire study. At baseline, mean PWV was abnormal at 10.2
Discussion
The novelty of our study was to demonstrate that arterial stiffness could significantly improve after a short endurance training program in patients with COPD. This improvement in arterial stiffness was proportional to improvement in exercise capacity after training and significantly related to changes in fasting glucose and BP after exercise. The 10% reduction in arterial stiffness obtained in the present investigation with exercise training is comparable in magnitude to what can be obtained
Acknowledgments
Author contributions: Dr Vivodtzev: contributed to the study hypothesis, study design, data collection and analyses, writing the manuscript, and sharing scientific discussions.
Dr Minet: contributed to data collection and analyses.
Dr Wuyam: contributed to writing the manuscript and sharing scientific discussions.
Dr Borel: contributed to data collection and analyses.
Dr Vottero: contributed to data collection and analyses.
Mr Monneret: contributed to data collection and analyses.
Dr Baguet:
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Funding/Support: This study was supported by grants from ATRIR “Bourse André DION” (Nyons, France); Scientific council of AGIR@dom (Meylan, France), and by an unrestricted grant from GlaxoSmithKline (20,000 Euros).
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