2024-02-02 09:45:25
To what extent does the lung influence exercise intolerance in children with chronic respiratory diseases?
Researchers in Spain have analyzed the ventilatory response to exercise in children with lung disease to try to answer this question precisely.
In Spain alone, it is estimated that around 397,000 children suffer from asthma and that cystic fibrosis, another important lung pathology, affects one in every 5,000 newborns in the country, being the most common among rare diseases. Knowing to what extent these two pathologies can limit the ability of minors to carry out their daily lives or carry out physical activity is important in order to design specific programs for them.
The research team, made up of, among others, Margarita Pérez-Ruiz, from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), and Márcio Vinícius Fagundes Donadio, from the International University of Catalonia (UIC), has analyzed the ventilatory response to exercise in children with these two types of lung disease to try to determine to what extent their pathologies limit and condition them when it comes to exercising.
“We tried to analyze the ventilatory response to exercise to detect the possible limitation caused by the lung, as well as to describe the exercise capacity in two pediatric populations with lung disease and a group of healthy children,” explains Margarita Pérez-Ruiz, from the ImFINE Group. from the Faculty of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences of the Polytechnic University of Madrid and one of the authors of this study.
“Exercise intolerance is common in chronic airway diseases (CAD), but its mechanisms are still poorly understood. Therefore, the objective of our study was to evaluate exercise capacity and its association with lung function, ventilatory limitation and ventilatory efficiency in children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis (CF) and asthma compared to healthy controls,” he adds.
Boys and girls playing soccer. (Photo: Amanda Mills/CDC)
Asthmatics, more limited in their cardiorespiratory capacity
As a sample, the researchers analyzed a total of 147 patients aged between 11.8 and 3 years of age. The three pathologies, asthma, cystic fibrosis, were analyzed and compared with the group of healthy children.
As expected, the results showed differences between asthmatic children and children with cystic fibrosis compared to their healthy peers in anthropometric and lung function measurements. The data also showed significant variations between asthmatic children, who were more limited by their lung function when exercising, and those with cystic fibrosis, whose results were more favorable in terms of exercise capacity, although the values were worse in terms of respiratory reserve.
“Patients with cystic fibrosis achieved good exercise capacity despite low ventilatory efficiency, low respiratory reserve, and reduced lung function. However, asthmatics obtained a reduced exercise capacity and normal ventilatory efficiency at maximum exercise,” explains the UPM researcher.
Asthmatics showed lower cardiorespiratory fitness compared to healthy children and those with cystic fibrosis, although those affected by cystic fibrosis showed worse respiratory reserve values. “The respiratory reserve variable was lower when patients with cystic fibrosis were compared to healthy and asthmatic patients. “Both patients with cystic fibrosis and asthmatics presented higher values of submaximal ventilatory equivalents compared to healthy patients, indicating lower ventilatory efficiency in both.”
For researchers, the importance of this work is that it provides important data to take into account in order to create a different exercise regimen with a personalized type and duration of session, in order not to cause rejection of physical activity in minors.
“Sometimes exercise, when it is not personalized and does not adapt to the patient, generates rejection and tends to be used at an insufficient dose to cause the necessary improvements in the child,” says Pérez-Ruiz. “These results can help us personalize training to ensure that minors with lung disease feel attracted to sport despite their limitations”
In addition to the institutions already mentioned, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) in Brazil, the European University of Madrid and the Niño Jesús Children’s University Hospital in Madrid, the latter two in Spain, also participated in the study.
The study is titled “Mechanisms of ventilatory limitation to maximum exercise in children and adolescents with chronic airway diseases.” And it has been published in the academic journal Pediatric Pulmonology. (Source: UPM)
#Lung #disease #physical #activity #childhood