Desy Salvadego

2. Materials and methods 2.1. Population Twenty male young patients with obesity (age: 17.2 ± 5.0 years), hospitalized at the Divisions of Auxology and Metabolic Diseases, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, IRCCS, Piancavallo-Verbania, Italy for a multidisciplinary 3-week body weight reduction program (BWRP), were admitted to the study and randomly assigned to two different rehabilitation programs. The randomization sequence was computer-generated and patients were blinded to treatment allocation.

Abstract Obesity significantly impairs breathing during exercise. The aim was to determine, in male obese adolescents (OB), the effects of acute respiratory muscle unloading, obtained by switching the inspired gas from ambient air (AIR) to a normoxic helium + oxygen gas mixture (HeO2) (AIR → HeO2) during moderate [below gas exchange threshold (GET)] and heavy [above GET] constant work rate cycling.

In obese male adolescents, a relatively short (3 weeks) program of RMET (Rigamonti et al. 2014), superimposed on a standard multidisciplinary BM reduction intervention (moderate caloric restriction, aerobic exercise training, psychological, and nutritional counselling) significantly reduced the O2 cost of walking and ameliorated signs of exercise tolerance (increased time to exhaustion during an incremental test, lower HR and RPE for the same walking velocity).