Effects of aerobic training on exercise tolerance and echocardiographic dimensions in untrained postmenopausal women

The cardiovascular effects of physical training were evaluated in a controlled trial involving 32 healthy, untrained, postmenopausal women. The subjects were randomly assigned to an aerobic exercise training program or a control group. The exercise group participated in at least three 40-minute supervised sessions per week for 8 months. Twenty-five subjects completed the study: eight in the control group and 17 in the training group. The training group had a significant increase over the training period in maximal oxygen consumption (27.3 +/- 4.6 ml/kg/min vs 30.8 +/- 5.4 ml/kg/min, p less than 0.05) and maximal treadmill exercise duration (9.8 +/- 2.6 minutes vs 11.3 +/- 2.2 minutes; p less than 0.05). The control group had no significant change in maximal treadmill exercise duration (9.0 +/- 1.2 minutes vs 9.2 +/- 1.4 minutes) but had a slight increase in maximal oxygen consumption (23.7 +/- 3.4 ml/kg/min vs 24.4 +/- 4.1 ml/kg/min, p less than 0.05). The training group had significant increases in M-mode echocardiographic left ventricular end-diastolic dimension (4.6 +/- 0.6 cm vs 4.8 +/- 0.4 cm, p less than 0.05) and calculated left ventricular ejection fraction (0.66 +/- 0.14 vs 0.74 +/- 0.12, p less than 0.05). M-mode echocardiograms demonstrated no significant change in left ventricular dimensions or wall thickness in the control group. In this group of untrained postmenopausal women, a training effect was associated with enhanced resting left ventricular ejection fraction and increased resting left ventricular end-diastolic dimension.