The OUES is not a valid submaximal measure of cardiopulmonary exercise capacity in children with mild to moderate CF, due to its limited distinguishing properties, its nonlinearity throughout progressive exercise, and its moderate correlation with VO(2peak) and the ventilatory threshold.
Our current position is that activity monitors such as SenseWear or ActiGraph offer informed choices to facilitate a comprehensive assessment of physical activity, and should as a minimum report on dimensions of physical activity including energy expenditure, step count and time spent in different intensities and sedentary time. The DigiWalker pedometer offers an informed choice of a comparatively inexpensive method of obtaining some measurement of physical activity. The HAES represents an informed choice of questionnaire to assess physical activity. There is insufficient data to recommend the use of one diary over another. Future research should focus on providing additional evidence of clinimetric properties of these and new physical activity assessment tools, as well as further exploring the added value of physical activity assessment in CF.
Introduction
Patients with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) are reported to have limited exercise capacity. There is no consensus about a possible abnormality in skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism in CF. Our aim is to test the hypothesis that abnormalities in oxygenation and/or muscle oxidative metabolism contribute to exercise intolerance in adolescents with mild CF.
Methods
Ten adolescents with CF (12–18 years of age, FEV1>80%pred, resting oxygen saturation > 94%) and ten healthy age-matched controls (HC) were tested with supine cycle ergometry using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and 31Phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P MRS) to study skeletal muscle oxygenation and oxidative metabolism during rest, exercise and recovery.
Results
No statistically significant (p>0.1) differences in peak workload and peak oxygen uptake per kilogram lean body mass were found between CF and HC. No differences were found between CF and HC in bulk changes of quadriceps phosphocreatine (PCr) (p = .550) and inorganic phosphate (Pi) (p = .896) content and pH (p = .512) during symptom limited exercise. Furthermore, we found statistically identical kinetics for PCr resynthesis during recovery for CF and HC (p = .53). No statistically significant difference in peak exercise arbitrary unit for total haemoglobin content (tHb_AU) was found between CF and HC (p = .66).
Discussion
The results of this study provide evidence that in patients with mild CF and a stable clinical status (without signs of systemic inflammation and/or chronic PA colonisation), no intrinsic metabolic constraints and/or abnormalities in oxygenation and/or muscle oxidative metabolism contribute to exercise intolerance.
In the absence of direct VO2 peak assessment it is possible to estimate VO2 peak in adolescents with CF using only a cycle ergometer. Furthermore, the regression model showed to be able to discriminate patients in different prognosis clusters based on exercise capacity.
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