TOPLINE

Children and adolescents with postinfectious bronchiolitis obliterans who completed a 16-week, remotely supervised, home-based high-intensity interval training (HIIT) program improved their cardiorespiratory fitness and functional capacity significantly more than those who received usual care, with greater gains noted in peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) and the number of sit-to-stand repetitions.

METHODOLOGY

• Researchers conducted a randomized trial to assess whether a remotely supervised, home-based HIIT program improved cardiorespiratory fitness and clinical and functional outcomes among children and adolescents with postinfectious bronchiolitis obliterans.
• They analyzed 51 patients aged 6-20 years (mean age, 13.3 years; 49% female) from three Spanish university hospitals who were clinically stable at baseline. Patients were assigned to either an exercise group (n = 25) or a control group (n = 26).
• The exercise group completed two real-time, remotely supervised HIIT sessions per week for 16 weeks, each lasting about 40-45 minutes, with continuous heart rate monitoring. The control group received standard physical activity advice from their pulmonologist.
• Main outcomes, which reflect cardiorespiratory fitness, were VO2peak, the time to the first ventilatory threshold (VT1), the percentage of VO2 at VT1, and ventilatory efficiency. All were assessed before and after the program using a treadmill exercise test with breath-by-breath gas analysis.

TAKEAWAY

• The exercise group had a significantly greater improvement in VO2peak than the control group, with a mean between-group difference of 3.39 mL/kg/min (Holm-adjusted P = .04).
• The time to VT1 was 1.05 minutes longer in the exercise group than in the control group (Holm-adjusted P = .04).
• The exercise group also completed 2.21 more repetitions on the 30-second sit-to-stand test, showing better functional capacity (P = .04).
• No meaningful differences were observed between the two groups in terms of measures of lung function, muscle strength, body composition, quality of life, or dyspnea.

IN PRACTICE

"Our findings illustrate the potential of a HIIT programme as an effective therapeutic tool to improve CRF [cardiorespiratory fitness] in children and adolescents with PIBO [postinfectious bronchiolitis obliterans], highlighting its clinical relevance," the authors wrote.

SOURCE

The study was led by Fernanda Salazar-Pérez, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. It was published online on October 09, 2026, in European Respiratory Journal.

LIMITATIONS

The home program depended partly on patients reporting their sessions and checking their own heart rate, which could have led to uneven exercise intensity.

DISCLOSURES

The trial was funded by the Spanish Sports Council, with support from the European Union's NextGenerationEU initiative, and by the Sociedad Española de Neumología y Cirugía Torácica through its research grant program. One author received support from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico. The authors reported having no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.