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 Patients randomly assigned to a three-month treadmill exercise
regimen showed decreases in two aspects of the illness that make it
difficult to breathe: inflammation and heightened sensitivity in the
airway.
While it’s not surprising that asthma patients may benefit from
aerobic exercise, the findings offer new evidence that physical
activity can help even in patients who are already controlling
symptoms with medication, said lead author Dr. Celso Carvalho, a
researcher at the University of Sao Paulo School of Medicine in
Brazil.
“This information strongly suggests that aerobic exercise has an
anti-inflammatory effect in asthma,” Carvalho said by email. The
findings point to a potential benefit of exercise for enhancing the
effectiveness of treatment with drugs, he said.
Globally, an estimated 235 million people suffer from asthma,
according to the World Health Organization.
The incurable chronic disease leads to sudden attacks of
breathlessness and wheezing. During attacks, the lining of the
bronchial tubes swells, narrowing the airways and restricting the
flow of air in and out of the lungs.
Many people with asthma routinely or periodically take daily
anti-inflammatory medications to reduce swelling and mucus
production in the airways, which can help control or prevent
symptoms.
In addition, asthma patients may use drugs known as bronchodilators,
which come in long-acting forms to control symptoms and short-acting
versions to help stop sudden attacks. These drugs relax the muscle
bands that tighten around the airways, letting more air in and out
of the lungs.
Carvalho and colleagues studied the impact of exercise on 43 asthma
patients between 20 and 59 years old, whose symptoms had been well
managed by drugs for at least 30 days and who had been monitored by
their doctors for at least six months.
They excluded patients who had cardiovascular, musculoskeletal or
other chronic lung diseases, as well as current or former smokers
and people who already regularly got plenty of exercise.
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Regardless of whether or not they were assigned to the exercise
group, all patients received yoga breathing classes twice a week for
12 weeks. The exercisers also worked out on treadmills for 35
minutes twice a week.
By the end of the study, bronchial hyper-responsiveness, or extreme
sensitivity that causes narrowing of the airways, decreased
significantly in the exercise group but not in the other patients.
Exercise also appeared to curb levels of some proteins, known as
cytokines, linked to inflammation.
One limitation of the study, in addition to its small size, is that
the cytokines, which were measured in blood tests, may not
necessarily reflect airway inflammation specifically, the authors
acknowledge in the journal Thorax.
Another concern is that exercise may actually trigger an asthma
attack, said Dr. Simon Bacon, an exercise science professor at
Concordia University and director of the Rehabilitation Center at
Sacred Heart Hospital of Montreal in Canada.
To minimize the risk, patients may need to use an inhaler before
they start exercising, and also take care to cool down properly at
the end of a workout, Bacon, who wasn’t involved in the study, said
by email.
“With the growing evidence that aerobic exercise seems to help, and
certainly doesn’t seem to harm, patients with asthma, I think
doctors can start suggesting this as a good add-on to regular asthma
treatments,” Bacon said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1LaN042 Thorax, online June 10, 2015.
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