Visa-versa! Breaking Instead of Pushing the Pedals-D

Visa-versa! Breaking Instead of Pushing the Pedals: Eccentric Exercise to Improve Training Performance in Healthy Controls. A Single-center Randomized Controlled Trial

Eccentric muscle work is defined as lengthening of a muscle while applying force. It was shown that with eccentric work, muscles are able to perform four times as much power compared to usual concentric work, which results in huge training gain with a highly decreased oxygen demand and thus lower cardiovascular load. Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a chronic condition associated with significant reduced exercise capacity and increased morbidity and mortality, resulting in reduced quality of life. Physical training has been shown to be beneficial in PH, even in severely limited patients. However, due to cardiopulmonary constraints in PH, training intensities may be very low, so that many patients are physically almost unable to perform exercise on a high enough level to maintain muscle mass. A low body muscle not only feeds the vicious cycle of decreasing exercise capacity, but also has many deleterious metabolic and immunological consequences which further increase disability and decrease quality of life in PH. Thus, eccentric training, which allows to gain muscle mass with a low stress to the cardiopulmonary unit may to be highly beneficial for patients with PH and allied cardiopulmonary disease, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart failure. Therefore, the objective of the trial is, to compare differences in oxygen uptake (peak VO2 [l/min]) and other physiological measures during similar cardiopulmonary exercise test protocols of eccentric- vs. concentric cycling in PH- patients and comparators with or without other cardiopulmonary diseases.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Healthy (Controls)
• Intervention / Treatment: Procedure: 15 minutes eccentric cycling; Procedure: 15 minutes concentric (normal) cycling

Detailed Description

Eccentric muscle work is when a muscle lengthens while applying force. Although eccentric muscle work is part of everyday life, e.g. whilst descending, it is not integrated in modern training protocols and its underlying physiological mechanisms are still incompletely understood. It was shown that muscles are able to perform four times as much power eccentrically compared to common concentric muscle work with a comparably very low oxygen demand and thus cardiovascular load. Thus, eccentric training may be of special interest for patients with cardiopulmonary diseases. Since much higher training intensities are achieved eccentrically, the training increase after a few weeks of eccentric training is huge compared to ordinary concentric training. In addition, it has been observed that these high intensities applied eccentrically lead also to a concentric gain in strength and are therefore transferable to everyday activities. Physical training has been shown to be beneficial in almost every cardiovascular disease, even in severely limited patients. However, training intensities may be very low in some patients with advanced cardiopulmonary disease, so some patients are physically almost unable to perform exercise on a beneficial level. Thus, for this collective, eccentric training may to be a very intriguing option. Patients with pulmonary vascular diseases such as pulmonary arterial and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (PH) per definition reveal an elevated pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) along with an increased pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR). However, also other common diseases, such as left heart disease (LHD) or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are often associated with PH. The cardinal symptoms of PH is dyspnea on exertion leading to limited exercise performance, daily activity and quality of life. PH-patients also benefit from structured exercise training, but training intensities might be limited in patients with advanced disease. A few studies have investigated eccentric exercising in cardiopulmonary patients but none in PH. Most of these studies are in patients with coronary heart disease- (CHD) or COPD, including only few participants and often studies did not followed sound methodologies, such as randomized-controlled trial (RCT) protocols However, even in the hitherto limited patients´ investigated, eccentric training was assessed beneficial, feasible and safe.

The physiological cardiopulmonary response to eccentric exercising has not been investigated in patients with PH and the physiological basis to investigate such training opportunities is completely lacking.

The aim of this project is to investigate the cardiopulmonary effects of eccentric exercise in using solid randomized-controlled research protocols in cardiopulmonary diseases with focus on PH in order to provide a basis to the question of whether this promising training method could become established in cardiopulmonary rehabilitation, especially in patients with advanced disease and pulmonary hypertension.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 24
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Switzerland
  • Zurich, Switzerland, 8091
    • Respiratory Clinic, University Hospital of Zurich

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 80 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Signed informed consent.
• no cardio respiratory diseases

Exclusion Criteria:

• Severe daytime hypoxemia (pO2 ≤7.3 kPa or <55 mmHg).
• Other clinically significant concomitant disease states (e.g., renal, hepatic dysfunction, etc.).
• Inability to follow the procedures of the study, e.g. due to language problems, psychological disorder, dementia or confusional state of the subject, neurological or orthopedic problems with inability to ride a bicycle.
• Woman with known pregnancy (Women with known pregnancy will not be allowed into the study. It will however not be searched for early unknown pregnancy in woman of child-bearing potential, as cycling is not contraindicated in early unknown pregnancy stage and we thus do not plan routine pregnancy tests before study entrance in women of childbearing potential).
• Enrolment into another clinical trial with active treatment.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Crossover Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Sham Comparator: Start with: Concentric (normal) cycling	Procedure: 15 minutes eccentric cycling; The exposure to eccentric exercise will be individualized-intensity stepwise incremental cycle exercise starting at 50 Watt with individually tailored increments every 5 minutes.; Procedure: 15 minutes concentric (normal) cycling; The exposure to concentric exercise will be individualized-intensity stepwise incremental cycle exercise starting at 50 Watt with individually tailored increments every 5 minutes.
Experimental: Start with: Eccentric cycling	Procedure: 15 minutes eccentric cycling; The exposure to eccentric exercise will be individualized-intensity stepwise incremental cycle exercise starting at 50 Watt with individually tailored increments every 5 minutes.; Procedure: 15 minutes concentric (normal) cycling; The exposure to concentric exercise will be individualized-intensity stepwise incremental cycle exercise starting at 50 Watt with individually tailored increments every 5 minutes.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Oxygen uptake (peak VO2 [l/min])	Difference in oxygen uptake (peak VO2 [l/min]) of eccentric vs. concentric cycling exercise.	1 Day

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Respiratory exchange ratio (RER)	Volume carbon dioxide devided by the volume of oxygen( VCO2/VO2)	1 day
Breathing equivalent for carbon dioxide	Minute ventilation divided by volume carbon dioxide (VE/VCO2)	1 day
Pulmonary end tidal carbon dioxide (PET CO2)	The level of carbon dioxide that is released at the end of an exhaled breath	1 day
Arterial oxygen saturation (SpO2)	Noninvasively measured oxygenation of the hemoglobin by pulse oximetry (Light Sensors)	1 day
Borg Scale for dyspnea	Patient reported level of dyspnea from 0 to 10 while 10 is the worst	1 day
Borg Scale for leg fatigue	Patient reported level of leg fatigue from 0 to 10 while 10 is the worst	1 day
Cardiac output	How many liters blood is the heart able to move in one minute. Assessed by echocardiography.	1 day
Pulmonary Artery Pressure	Right ventricle pressure divided by the right atrium pressure gradient (RV/RA pressure gradient) to assess the systolic pulmonary artery pressure by echocardiography	1 day
Blood pressure	Systolic and diastolic blood pressure assessed by arm cuff measurement	1 day
Brain tissue oxygenation	Oxygenation of the brain tissue assessed by light sensors on the forehead	1 day
Muscle tissue oxygenation	Oxygenation of the muscle tissue assessed by light sensors on the quadriceps muscle	1 day
Arterial blood gases: PH	Arterial blood gases: PH, assessed by arterial blood sample	1 day
Arterial blood gases: Partialpressure for oxygen (PaO2)	Arterial blood gases: Partialpressure for oxygen (PaO2), assessed by arterial blood sample	1 day
Arterial blood gases: Bicarbonate (HCO3)	Arterial blood gases: Bicarbonate (HCO3), assessed by arterial blood sample	1 day
Arterial blood gases: lactate	Arterial blood gases: lactate, assessed by arterial blood sample	1 day

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Zurich

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): December 15, 2021
• Primary Completion (Actual): December 31, 2022
• Study Completion (Actual): April 30, 2023

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: December 6, 2021
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 10, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): January 11, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): January 30, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 29, 2024
• Last Verified: January 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: Visa-Versa!-D

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No