Interactive Effects of Enalapril Administration and Novel HIIT Wheel-Bed Training in Aged Rats.
Youfeng Yang, Anisha Banerjee, Yi Sun and 2 others
PMID 34901931WHAT IT FOUND
Aged rats completed a new high-intensity interval training protocol on a forced running wheel-bed without electric shocks.
After four weeks, the exercised rats doubled their endurance time compared to sedentary controls. Adding the drug enalapril did not further improve performance.
Key findings
01All rats in the intervention group completed the four-week training period without dropout.
02Exercised rats showed significantly better endurance than sedentary controls, doubling their performance time.
03Combining the training with enalapril treatment did not result in a statistically significant improvement over training alone.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study was conducted entirely in rats, so the results cannot be directly applied to human patients. The sample size was small (37 rats in the main experiment). The feasibility study used different rat strains and ages compared to the intervention study, making it unclear if speed differences were due to age or genetics. The primary outcome (endurance) was measured on a treadmill, while the training was on a wheel-bed, which may introduce measurement bias.
Declared interests
The authors declared no commercial or financial conflicts of interest. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Aging), the UAB Nathan Shock Center, and the UAB Center for Exercise Medicine.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this as evidence that a specific HIIT protocol or enalapril administration is effective for human patients. The study establishes the feasibility of a new exercise device for rats and confirms that exercise improves endurance in this animal model, but it does not test interventions in humans.