Eccentric Training in Individuals With COPD

Summary

Skeletal muscle dysfunction as a systemic consequence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has a major impact on quality of life, health care resource utilization, and mortality of patients with this disease. In fact, a vicious circle of inactivity and disuse is established in the advanced stages of the disease, inducing a progressive decline in exercise tolerance and a loss of muscle mass (especially in locomotor muscles), resulting in the inability of patients to perform even the simplest daily activities.

In this context, the multidisciplinary rehabilitation approach includes not only recovery of exercise capacity but also training aimed at restoring muscle function in patients with COPD. However, there is considerable methodological variability among muscle resistance training programs used in clinical practice with patients with COPD. This is compounded by the need to identify alternative training strategies effective in inducing functional adaptation in skeletal muscle without increasing the degree of dyspnea or fatigue in those symptomatic patients with advanced stages of disease. Among these, eccentric exercise or negative work, i.e. the stretching of the muscle during the active contraction phase, represents a valid alternative to traditional concentric training in various rehabilitation contexts. The main advantages of this training method are: 1) eccentric contraction is able to produce greater forces than isometric and concentric contraction; 2) for the same resistance, eccentric contraction has a lower metabolic cost than concentric contraction. For these reasons, eccentric exercise is a valid method of muscle strengthening in rehabilitation and in particular in those subjects unable to sustain a high cardiorespiratory effort, as in the case of patients with moderate-severe COPD. Previous studies have also shown that eccentric exercise, even at low load, produces results equivalent if not superior to traditional training with respect to some particular characteristics of muscle function such as power and hypertrophy.

However, eccentric training programs for muscle dysfunction recovery in patients with COPD are underused in clinical practice, so far. In contrast, the so called iso-weight eccentric training, more suitable for clinical practice, could also be applied to rehabilitation programs designed for COPD patients.

The aim of this study is therefore to evaluate the reliability and efficacy of a low-load eccentric exercise training program compared to usual care for the improvement of muscle function in patients with COPD.

Conditions

• Copd

Interventions

OTHER

Low-load eccentric training

* Aerobic exercise training on a downhill walking treadmill with the following settings: 10% negative incline and constant speed corresponding to 75% of the average speed recorded during the initial 6-Minute walk test. * Resistance training: 5 minutes of warm-up on the manual ergometer, then 3 sets for 10 repetitions of the leg extension (performed unilaterally in eccentric phase) with a load of 75% of 1 repetition maximum (concentric) for the first two weeks. The following two weeks, 3 sets for 10 repetitions will be performed on the leg press (performed unilaterally in the eccentric phase) with 75% load of 1 repetition maximum (concentric). In addition, patients will perform 3 upper extremity strengthening exercises (free weights or elastic bands), including 2 sets of 10 repetitions for each exercise.

OTHER

Usual care

* Aerobic exercise training using the cycle ergometer at an intensity calculated as follows: 2 minutes with load equal to 20% of maximum load, then 25 minutes with initial load at 50% of maximum load calculated as 103.217 + (30.500xGender) + (-1.613xAge) + \[0.002x6-Minute walk work (6MWW)\]. \[Sex: female = 0; male:1\] \[6MWW = 6-Minute walk distance x weight in kg\]. * Resistance training: 5 minutes of warm-up on the manual ergometer, then 5 exercises for upper and lower limbs performed with free weights or elastic bands. For the first 2 weeks will be performed 2 sets X 20 repetitions with 1 minute break between sets and a load that allows to perform no more than 20 repetitions. For the following 2 weeks, 3 sets of 10 repetitions x 10 repetitions with 2 min break between sets and a load that allows for no more than 10 repetitions.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi Onlus

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

TRIPLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

40 Years

Max Age

85 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-09-13

Primary Completion

2022-11-30

Completion

2022-11-30

Countries

• Italy

Study Locations