Experts who study the aging process have long known exercise is fundamental in maintaining our overall health as long as possible. What’s not clear, however, is why some older people benefit from a workout more than others.
Two Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation scientists hope to better understand this mystery. To do so, they’ll conduct a novel clinical trial as part of a new $7.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Benjamin Miller, Ph.D., and Sue Bodine, Ph.D., will collaborate with researchers from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition and the University of Florida over the grant’s five-year period.
Previous studies have examined the benefits of either cardiovascular exercise or strength training, Miller said. This one involves both types for all participants.
“By the end, we hope to create a predictive model around the factors that determine at a cellular level whether a person responds or doesn’t respond to exercise,” said Miller, who holds the G.T. Blankenship Chair in Aging Research at OMRF. “From there, we can modify exercise to the different types of people, so that, hopefully, everyone has a positive response.”
Their study will involve two phases and roughly 200 people. Participants will all be volunteers aged 60 and older who don’t currently exercise regularly. Following tests of each person’s muscle mass and cardiovascular fitness, subjects will undergo an initial 12 weeks of supervised strength and endurance training at OMRF. Then each person will be tested again.
“It’s a well-known phenomenon that if you give a group of people the same exercise regimen, many of them will make considerable, measurable improvements, but some don’t change much, if at all,” Miller said. “What separates this study from previous research is the second phase.”
During Phase 2, the study team will increase the intensity of training for subjects who showed little or no improvement during the first phase. For those who made gains in Phase I, some will continue at the same pace for another 10 weeks, while others will be released from the supervised exercise program.
Another round of tests will be conducted on all participants following Phase 2.
“We hope to better understand how each person – particularly an older person –responds to a specific type and the intensity of training,” said Bodine, who leads a national consortium of scientists studying how exercise improves health at a molecular level. “If we can determine why someone isn’t responding to a particular exercise protocol, can it be tailored to meet their specific needs?”
Recruitment for the trial will begin early next year. Miller will not be surprised if the results confirm that regular workouts can protect against age-related diseases.
“It’s well established that diseases accumulate in aging adults, but what if we could slow the aging process to reduce or prevent the onset of those diseases?” he said. “No pill has more potential to do that than exercise.”
This grant, No. 1R01AG089192-01, was awarded by the National Institute on Aging, part of the NIH.
