Background
Sarcopenia is a disease associated with different functional and biological factors related to the aging process. Preventing sarcopenia is important because this disease is associated with increased risk of frailty, falls, fractures, hospitalization, and mortality in older adults. Physical exercise has been the most used intervention for the prevention and treatment of sarcopenia. However, most of the exercise interventions have focused on strength training and nutritional supplementation, targeting the intervention for sarcopenia as a problem related only to muscle mass and strength. However, sarcopenia is a multidimensional condition with negative impacts on functional status. Dual-task training is effective in increasing different functional variables such as balance and gait speed. Nevertheless, there are few studies focused on the effect of this intervention on clinical and biological variables related to sarcopenia. For this reason, the objective of this study was to analyze the effects of dual-task training on clinical and biological measurements of sarcopenia in non-sarcopenic older adults.
Methods
48 older adults were included in this study. Fat-free mass, fat mass, calf circunference, handgrip strenght, 5-repetition sit-to stand, 4-meter gait speed, six-minute walking test and oxidative stress blood biomakers were evaluated. Individuals were allocated into one of these two groups: dual-task training (experimental group) and simple-task training (control group) for 12 weeks, 3 times a week, 50 minutes each session. Student's t test, Mann-Whitney test, and ANCOVA, with adjustment for baseline were used. Cohen's effect size was calculated.
Results
Dual-task training increased the fat-free mass and calf circunference, and reduced the fat mass (Cohen's effect size from 0.4 to 1.0; p < 0.05 for all). Both groups showed improvement in 5-repetition sit-to stand, 4-meter gait speed, six-minute walking test (Cohen's effect size from 0.5 to 1.0; p < 0.05 for all). All the antioxidant biomakers (glutathione transferase, catalase, total plasma antioxidant potential and sulfhydryl grouping) increased after dual-task training (Cohen's effect size from 0.4 to 1.0; p < 0.05 for all).
Conclusion
Dual-task training improved muscle mass, muscle strenght and physical performance, which are the clinical measurements of sarcopenia. Additionally, this intervention also increased the antioxidant capacity in healthy older adults.