Der überraschende Zusammenhang zwischen Sport und Myositis

RARE TIPPS

May 16

Wie sich körperliche Aktivität auf diese seltene Krankheit auswirkt - und warum Sie darüber Bescheid wissen sollten.

A woman wearing a green sweater and and black pants runs outdoors

The question of whether exercise can benefit or complicate the course of myositis has been studied for the past two decades. With muscle weakness and the fatigue and pain of myositis, many people with myositis, no matter how fit they were before diagnosis, may be wary of attempting to exercise. During the last couple of years, there has been new evidence to suggest that intensive endurance exercise can work as an anti-inflammatory treatment, increasing muscle growth and function in comparison to doing no exercise at all. Recent studies assessing exercise’s effect on polymyositis and dermatomyositis seem to support the conclusion.

Based on the assumption that people with myositis have less endurance due to reduced aerobic capacity and muscle weakness, researchers questioned whether endurance training could improve exercise performance by increasing aerobic capacity. Furthermore, since endurance training is known to provide health benefits they wanted to see if the results of this type of exercise could improve health status for people with myositis. Read on to learn more about the study and its findings.

Das Übungsprogramm

In a randomized controlled clinical trial, an intensive aerobic and endurance-based exercise program was given to a group with polymyositis and dermatomyositis and another group of healthy volunteers for comparison. The myositis exercise group engaged in a one-hour exercise program three times a week for 12 weeks. This consisted of five-minute warm-up cycling followed by up to 30 minutes of more intense cycling where the intensity was gradually increased during the training period. Then there were 20 minutes of muscular endurance exercise of both the upper and lower limbs ending with a cool-down and stretch.

Nach 12 Wochen: Ergebnisse

The results proved to be interesting. Both groups’ exercise capacity was measured in terms of their time to exhaustion, lactate levels, and heart rate before and after the exercise program. All of the participants in the myositis group had an increase in the cycling endurance time to exhaustion, along with lower lactate levels at the end of the exercise program. By comparison, the control group of healthy volunteers had no consistent changes in their lactate levels or endurance ability from the start to the end of the exercise program.

Aus dieser Studie gingen zwei wichtige Erkenntnisse hervor:

A substantially lower endurance exercise capacity for people with polymyositis/dermatomyositis even when their disease was stable, compared to healthy people of the same age, demographics, and fitness level.
Obwohl die Teilnehmer mit Myositis zu Beginn aufgrund von Schwäche und der Unfähigkeit, die trainierenden Muskeln angemessen zu aktivieren, eine eingeschränkte körperliche Leistungsfähigkeit aufwiesen, zeigen die Ergebnisse eine Verbesserung der Ausdauer beim Radfahren nach 12 Wochen Ausdauertraining. Tatsächlich verbesserten alle Patienten, die an dem Trainingsprogramm teilnahmen, ihre körperliche Leistungsfähigkeit, selbst diejenigen, die zu Beginn eine stark eingeschränkte Muskelfunktion und Ausdauerleistung hatten.

Researchers concluded that endurance training is effective in PM/DM patients even when they are in a chronic stable disease phase with severe muscle dysfunction. They also account for the improvement due to increased aerobic capacity in the myositis group after they completed their training period.

A growing body of evidence supports the belief that exercise is a very important part of the treatment plan for adult patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathies.

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