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 Researchers randomly assigned 1,635 adults ages 70 to 89 to
participate either in a structured exercise program or in health
education workshops. The exercisers did up to 150 minutes a week of
walking and activities to improve strength, balance and flexibility.
After two years, people who weren’t frail at the start of the study
were no less likely to become frail with exercise than without it,
the study found. But with exercise, they were less likely to lose
their ability to rise from a chair, one component of frailty.
“The benefits of physical activity in terms of preventing physical
disability still persist in older adults who are already
experiencing symptoms of frailty,” said senior study author Roger
Fielding of Tufts University in Boston.
“Nearly all older adults can benefit from a regular structured
program of physical activity including those who are frail,”
Fielding said by email. “In non-frail older adults, exercise may
reduce the risk of developing specific components of the frailty
syndrome like losing the ability to rise from a chair.”
At the start of the study, participants typically had some
functional limitations, but they could walk 400 meters (0.25 miles)
in 15 minutes or less without assistance. About 6 percent of the
people in the exercise group and 5 percent in the health education
group were already considered frail.
People were considered frail if they could not rise from a chair 5
times without using the arms, had lost a significant amount of
weight recently, and felt like they had no energy.
Two years later, about 19 percent of the people in the exercise
group and 21 percent in the health education group were frail. The
difference between the groups was so small that it might have been
due to chance.
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The inability to rise from a chair was the only frailty criterion
that was influenced by the exercise program. The percentage of
participants who couldn’t accomplish this task was about 3 percent
to 6 percent lower in the exercise group than in the health
education group.
One limitation of the study is that researchers didn’t have data to
show which individual components of the exercise program might have
influenced frailty or disability.
Still, the results suggest that most elderly people can benefit from
exercise, said Dr. Rebecca Brown, author of an accompanying
editorial and a geriatrics researcher at the University of
California, San Francisco, and the San Francisco Veterans Affairs
Medical Center.
“While there isn’t definitive evidence (yet) that exercise can
prevent frailty, this study shows that exercise reduces the risk of
disability, whether or not you are frail,” Brown said by email.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2m7CrXh Annals of Internal Medicine, online
January 8, 2018.
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