Annals of Medicine (Dec 2023)

Ambulatory and successive home-based heart rate targeted aerobic training improves arterial parameters: a follow-up study in people with metabolic syndrome

  • Jurate Zupkauskiene,
  • Ieva Lauceviciene,
  • Ligita Ryliskyte,
  • Petras Navickas,
  • Romualdas Kizlaitis,
  • Aleksandras Laucevicius

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/07853890.2023.2250363
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 55, no. 2

Abstract

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AbstractBackground Studies demonstrated that outpatient aerobic exercise programs (aEP) can significantly decrease aortic stiffness in people with metabolic syndrome (MetS). There is some limited data that remotely supervised home-based aEP can also improve arterial stiffness in this population. We aimed to evaluate the changes in the arterial wall parameters after the 2-month ambulatory supervised aEP followed by the 6-month home-based aEP with and without targeting of heart rate (HR) by electrocardiogram (ECG) in people with MetS.Methods In this prospective study (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT05592704) 132 MetS subjects (mean age 52.44 ± 6.26 years, 54.55% female) were evaluated. At first, all subjects participated in the 2-month ambulatory supervised aEP, which consisted of 40 individual aerobic training sessions on a cycle ergometer 5 times/week for 40 min and received the recommendations for home-based training. Then the study (n = 66) and the control (n = 66) groups participated in the 6-month home-based aEP, but only the study group subjects targeted their HR using ECG monitor connected to the smartphone during workouts. Arterial stiffness parameters and carotid artery intima-media thickness (cIMT) were evaluated in all participants at baseline and after 8 months.Results After 8 months, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (c-f PWV) significantly reduced in both groups (−12.22% in the study group vs. −7.85% in the control group, all p 7.90 m/s). A significant decrease of 3.32% in cIMT was present only in the study group (p = .032, d = −0.288).Conclusions The combination of 2-month ambulatory supervised aEP and successive 6-month home-based aEP targeted by HR monitoring using ECG improved arterial properties in MetS subjects more than the same combination without HR targeting, leading to the greater reduction of c-r PWV and cIMT.

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