Inspiratory Muscle Activation Patterns in Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

The prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is 11.7% around the world in 2010, and it is expected to rise over the next 30 years. COPD is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that causes obstructed airflow from the lung, characterized by chronic cough, dyspnea, and sputum production. Studies have found evidences of inspiratory muscle weakness in patients with COPD which include a reduction in maximal inspiratory pressure (PImax), a shift toward oxidative type I fibers and atrophy in all types of fibers in diaphragm muscle. The shift of diaphragm muscle fiber toward oxidative type I fibers might result from endurance training-like effect that served to counteract the negative effects of elevated oxidative stress and systemic inflammation in patients with COPD.

Inspiratory muscle training (IMT) is commonly applied to patients with COPD during pulmonary rehabilitation, but its clinical benefits remain inconclusive. Some studies showed that IMT improves breathing pattern, dyspnea and the strength and endurance of diaphragm, while others showed that IMT could not improve inspiratory muscle strength and functional exercise capacity either applied alone or in addition to pulmonary rehabilitation in patients with COPD. Evidence from animal study showed that overloading the diaphragm during resistive breathing might induce acute diaphragm injury. Increases oxidative stress and systemic inflammation, and exacerbating the apoptosis of the diaphragm fibers may also occur during IMT in patients with COPD, which leads to the progression of diaphragm muscle fibers atrophy. In human studies, the intensity used for IMT ranged from 10% to 70% of PImax, and the training effect showed no clear dose-response pattern. The optimal intensity that would induce positive physiological effect without eliciting overloading injury remains unclear. In healthy adults, the accessory muscles, such as sternocleidomastoid (SCM), scalenes, and intercostals muscle, would be recruited to assist ventilation with increasing ventilatory demand. Thus the activation of accessory muscles could be an indicator for training overload. However, the activation pattern of accessory muscle has not been studied in patients with COPD during IMT. Whether the commonly prescribed intensity for IMT would lead to excessive activation of diaphragm, and more accessory muscle recruitment in patients with COPD remains to be determined. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to exam diaphragm and SCM muscle activation using surface electromyography during loaded inspiratory muscle tests with 30% and 50% of PImax intensity.