Effects of home-based tele-exercise on sarcopenia among community-dwelling elderly adults: Body composition and functional fitness

Objectives: This study aims to develop a form of tele-exercise that would enable real-time interactions between exercise instructors and community-dwelling elderly people and to investigate its effects on improvement of sarcopenia-related factors of body composition and functional fitness among the elderly. Design: Randomized, controlled trial, with a 12-week intervention period. Setting: Community-dwelling senior citizens in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, South Korea. Participants: The participants were 23 elderly individuals (tele-exercise group: 11, control group: 12), aged 69 to 93 years. Intervention: The tele-exercise program was developed utilizing a 15-in. all-in-one PC and video conferencing software (Skype(TM)), with broadband Internet connectivity. The tele-exercise group performed supervised resistance exercise at home for 20-40 min a day three times per week for 12 weeks. The remote instructor provided one-on-one instruction to each participant during the intervention. The control group maintained their lifestyles without any special intervention. Measurements: The sarcopenia-related factors of body composition and functional fitness were examined prior to, as well as following, a 12-week intervention period. The data were analyzed with a two-way repeated measures ANOVA. Results: There were significant improvements in lower limb muscle mass (p = 0.017), appendicular lean soft tissue (p = 0.032), total muscle mass (p = 0.033), and chair sit-and-reach length (p = 0.019) for the tele-exercise group compared to the control group. No group x time interaction effects were detected for the 2-min step, chair stand, and time effects (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Video conferencing-based supervised resistance exercise had positive effects on sarcopenia-related factors such as total-body skeletal muscle mass, appendicular lean soft tissue, lower limb muscle mass, and the chair sit-and-reach scores among community-dwelling elderly adults. These results imply that tele-exercise can be a new and effective intervention method for increasing skeletal muscle mass and the physical functioning of the lower limbs from the perspective of sarcopenia improvement among the elderly. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.