Equipment-free, unsupervised high intensity interval training elicits significant improvements in the physiological resilience of older adults.

BACKGROUND: Reduced cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is an independent risk factor for dependency, cognitive impairment and premature mortality. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a proven time-efficient stimulus for improving both CRF and other facets of cardiometabolic health also known to decline with advancing age. However, the efficacy of equipment-free, unsupervised HIIT to improve the physiological resilience of older adults is not known. METHODS: Thirty independent, community-dwelling older adults (71(SD: 5) years) were randomised to 4 weeks (12 sessions) equipment-free, supervised (in the laboratory (L-HIIT)) or unsupervised (at home (H-HIIT)) HIIT, or a no-intervention control (CON). HIIT involved 5, 1-minute intervals of a bodyweight exercise each interspersed with 90-seconds recovery. CRF, exercise tolerance, blood pressure (BP), body composition, muscle architecture, circulating lipids and glucose tolerance were assessed at baseline and after the intervention period. RESULTS: When compared to the control group, both HIIT protocols improved the primary outcome of CRF ((via anaerobic threshold) mean difference, L-HIIT: +2.27, H-HIIT: +2.29, both p < 0.01) in addition to exercise tolerance, systolic BP, total cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol and m. vastus lateralis pennation angle, to the same extent. There was no improvement in these parameters in CON. There was no change in diastolic BP, glucose tolerance, whole-body composition or HDL cholesterol in any of the groups. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to show that short-term, time-efficient, equipment-free, HIIT is able to elicit improvements in the CRF of older adults irrespective of supervision status. Unsupervised HIIT may offer a novel approach to improve the physiological resilience of older adults, combating age-associated physiological decline, the rise of inactivity and the additional challenges currently posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov and coded: NCT03473990 .

Providing early indication of regional anomalies in COVID-19 case counts in England using search engine queries.

Prior work has shown the utility of using Internet searches to track the incidence of different respiratory illnesses. Similarly, people who suffer from COVID-19 may query for their symptoms prior to accessing the medical system (or in lieu of it). To assist in the UK government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic we analyzed searches for relevant symptoms on the Bing web search engine from users in England to identify areas of the country where unexpected rises in relevant symptom searches occurred. These were reported weekly to the UK Health Security Agency to assist in their monitoring of the pandemic. Our analysis shows that searches for "fever" and "cough" were the most correlated with future case counts during the initial stages of the pandemic, with searches preceding case counts by up to 21 days. Unexpected rises in search patterns were predictive of anomalous rises in future case counts within a week, reaching an Area Under Curve of 0.82 during the initial phase of the pandemic, and later reducing due to changes in symptom presentation. Thus, analysis of regional searches for symptoms can provide an early indicator (of more than one week) of increases in COVID-19 case counts.