Publication date: Oct 03, 2024
Long COVID-19 is characterized by systemic deterioration of the entire body, leading to significant physical and mental disorders. Exercise training has the potential to improve persistent symptoms and cardiopulmonary functions. This was a single-center, randomized, controlled trial. Twenty-four patients aged 18 to 75 years who had a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and long COVID symptoms. Patients were randomly allocated in a 1:1 ratio to receive either a 4-week exercise training program or an attention control group. The training group participated in 12 supervised aerobic sessions on a cycling ergometer over 4 weeks. The outcomes were to assess the impact of a 4-week aerobic exercise on the persistent symptoms and cardiopulmonary fitness, the surrogate endpoints of COVID-19 recovery and cardiopulmonary health. After the 4-week intervention, significant reductions were observed in the total number of symptoms in the training group. Specifically, 67. 8% of patients in the training group exhibited reduced or completely resolved symptoms, in comparison to 16. 7% in the control group (P = 0. 013). After adjusting for gender, significant improvements in the training group were observed for exercise time (P = 0. 028), maximum load (P = 0. 01), and peak VO (P = 0. 001), as well as O pulse (P = 0. 042) and maximum heart rate (P = 0. 007). The score of Short Form-12, depression, anxiety, perceived stress, and insomnia did not show significant changes between groups (P > 0. 05). A supervised aerobic training program has the potential to alleviate persistent symptoms and improve exercise tolerance in patients with long COVID-19. Further research is necessary to confirm these effects in a large population. This intervention could be easily implemented in non-hospital settings, potentially benefiting a broader range of individuals. ClinicalTrials. gov NCT05961462. Registered on July 25, 2023.