Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the deadliest societal diseases of the 21st century, affecting more than 250 million people with prevalence rates still climbing. Today, the primary focus of COPD treatment is on improving lung function, and less attention is paid to the substantial negative impact of extrapulmonary manifestations, that is changes outside of the lungs. Key extrapulmonary manifestations include decreased or impaired brain, muscle, and cardiac functions. E.g. quadriceps muscle atrophy (loss of muscle mass) is associated with a 4-fold increase in mortality , and people with coexisting COPD and cognitive dysfunction (i.e. reduced cognitive ability) have a rate of death nearly 3-times as high compared to having each condition alone. Extrapulmonary manifestations are also, independent of the degree of lung impairment, closely linked to decreased quality of life, reduced daily physical activity, increased healthcare use, exercise intolerance, and increased symptom. Therefore, the need for new effective treatment modalities that go beyond the lungs are urgently needed. The aim of COPD-HIT is to pave the way for new understanding of the development and treatment of extrapulmonary manifestations in COPD with a focus on brain healthy, muscle quality, and cardiac function.
To do this, the project focus on the following research objectives (RO):
● RO1) Determine the effect of supramaximal High-Intensity Training (HIT) on the brain, muscle, and heart
● RO2) Determine how exercise training and inflammation impacts the trajectories of neurodegeneration
● RO3) Develop a novel in-vitro model to determine signaling pathways following various loading intensities
Through successful completion of RO1-3, the expected outcomes of the COPD-HIT are:
● RO1) a novel, ground-breaking treatment modality that can overcome the barriers associated with traditional moderate-intensity continous exercise, for the first time, enabling multiple extrapulmonary benefits using the same treatment modality.
● RO2) pioneer evidence on the impact of exercise at different intensities to reduce neurodegeneration in COPD and to what extent inflammation mediates neurodegeneration and exercise treatment responses over time.
● RO3) an innovative and valid in-vitro model and novel evidence on signaling pathways to different loading regimens in normoxia and hypoxia – opening new frontiers in COPD exercise research that could be used to design new exercise modalities and identify novel targets for future treatment.
