Research

Hormonal

Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise training (AET) reverses skeletal muscle atrophy and ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) overactivation in heart failure patients by restoring redox balance and normalizing proteasome activity.

If you have heart failure, moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (like brisk walking or uphill walking at 60% of your max capacity) for 50 minutes, twice a week in a supervised setting plus once at home, can reverse muscle wasting and improve your energy levels. This benefit is not achieved by medication alone, so you must include this specific type of exercise in your treatment plan under medical supervision.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Collectively, our data provide evidence that AET effectively counteracts redox imbalance and UPS overactivation, preventing skeletal myopathy and exercise intolerance in sympathetic hyperactivity-induced HF in mice. Of particular interest, AET attenuates skeletal muscle proteasome activity paralleled by improved aerobic capacity in HF patients, which is not achieved by drug treatment itself.
Telma F. Cunha et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012

Why this rating

The study uses a robust animal model with human validation, randomized controlled design for the human arm, and multiple mechanistic endpoints, though the human sample size is small.

Source

Exercise Training Prevents Oxidative Stress and Ubiquitin-Proteasome System Overactivity and Reverse Skeletal Muscle Atrophy in Heart Failure

Telma F. Cunha et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0041701

rctCited 169×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →