Exercise training in heart failure … and other research

Tom Nolan reviews this week’s research Exercise for 30 minutes three times a week on an exercise bike for a month; then make the sessions an hour long and add resistance training with two sets of 12-15 reps on seven different weight machines, and keep that up for a whole year. No, this isn’t my overly ambitious new year’s fitness regimen, but the intervention in a study of combined endurance and resistance exercise training in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Unsurprisingly, most of the 83 people randomised to exercise training weren’t able to adhere to this (although 47.5% managed at least two sessions a week). At the end of the study there was no difference in modified Packer score, which incorporates mortality and …