Acute and Chronic Endothelial Responses to Home-based High Intensity Interval Training in Healthy Older Adults

Abstract

Advancing age is associated with endothelial dysfunction, a key early event in atherosclerosis development. Endurance exercise is recommended for cardiovascular disease prevention and some studies report endurance exercise training has beneficial effects on endothelial function in older adults. We have recently developed a supervised home-based exercise intervention using high intensity interval training on an all-extremity non-weight-bearing ergometer (HIIT-ANE). We tested the hypotheses that in healthy older adults: 1) endothelial function is improved in response to chronic HIIT-ANE, 2) the acute endothelial responses to HIIT-ANE are different in the trained and untrained states, and 3) the acute and chronic endothelial responses to HIIT-ANE are related. We assessed flow-mediated dilation (FMD), a measure of endothelial function, using brachial artery ultrasonography in twenty healthy sedentary older adults (age: 66±1, means ± SE; 11 postmenopausal women and 9 men). FMD was assessed: 1) in response to chronic HIIT-ANE (at baseline, after 8 weeks of normal lifestyle (control condition), and after 8 weeks of home-based HIIT-ANE) and 2) in response to a single session of HIIT-ANE (at pre-exercise, end of exercise and 1-hr and 24-hrs post-exercise), in the untrained and trained states. Following 8 weeks of HIIT-ANE, FMD was improved compared with baseline (3.39±0.30 vs. 4.18±0.46 %, P=0.005), but was not significantly changed from pre- to post-HIIT-ANE (3.68±0.44 vs. 4.18±0.46 %, P=0.3) or from baseline to post-control (3.39±0.30 vs. 3.68±0.44 %, P=0.4). In the untrained state, FMD was attenuated in response to a single bout of HIIT-ANE from pre- to 1-hr post-exercise (4.15±0.35 vs. 2.92±0.36 %, P=0.0004) and returned to pre-exercise level in 24-hrs post-exercise (4.15±0.35 vs. 3.98±0.40 %, P=1). In the trained state, the acute FMD response to HIIT-ANE was similar to the untrained state (P=0.6 for training state × time). The chronic change in FMD was inversely related with the acute change in FMD in the trained state (ρ=-0.70; p<0.001), but not in the untrained state (ρ=-0.12; P=0.6). Biological sex did not significantly influence the acute or chronic FMD responses to HIIT-ANE (P≥0.1). In healthy older adults: 1) FMD is improved following 8-weeks of home-based remotely supervised HIIT-ANE compared to baseline, 2) FMD is attenuated and normalized within 24 hours of a single session of HIIT-ANE, and 3) chronic changes in FMD are related to acute changes in FMD. This work was supported by the National Institute of Aging grant AG063143. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.