Exercise and cardiovascular benefit in subjects with COPD: the need for randomised trials

From the authors: We thank C.E. Bolton and colleagues for their interest in our report about arterial stiffness in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) [1]. Our paper has two major findings: 1) aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) in COPD is not related to systemic inflammation; and 2) aortic PWV does not respond to pulmonary rehabilitation [1]. According to C.E. Bolton and colleagues, these findings are unexpected as two previous papers did report small, but significant reductions in aortic PWV with exercise and/or pulmonary rehabilitation [[2, 3]. However, Vivodtzev et al. [2] used carotid-brachial pulse wave velocity as an outcome of arterial stiffness, which is known to be more susceptible to modification by exercise training than central (aortic) elastic …