Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Jan 13:16:200171.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijcrp.2023.200171. eCollection 2023 Mar.

Age-related decline in peak oxygen uptake: Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal findings. A review

Jon Magne Letnes  1   2 , Bjarne M Nes  1   2 , Ulrik Wisløff  1   3
Affiliations
Review

Age-related decline in peak oxygen uptake: Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal findings. A review

Jon Magne Letnes et al. Int J Cardiol Cardiovasc Risk Prev. .

Abstract

Cardiorespiratory fitness is established as an important prognostic factor for cardiovascular and general health. In clinical settings cardiorespiratory fitness is often measured by cardiopulmonary exercise testing determining the gold-standard peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak). Due to the considerable impact of age and sex on VO2peak, results from cardiopulmonary exercise testing are typically assessed in the context of age- and sex-specific reference values, and multiple studies have been conducted establishing reference materials by age and sex using cross-sectional designs. However, crossectional and longitudinal studies have shown somewhat conflicting results regarding age-related declines of VO2peak, with larger declines reported in longitudinal studies. In this brief review, we compare findings from crossectional and longitudinal studies on age-related trajectories in VO2peak to highlight differences in these estimates which should be acknowledged when clinicians interpret VO2peak measurements repeated over time.

Keywords: Cardiopulmonary reference data; Cardiorespiratory fitness; Exercise testing; Peak oxygen uptake.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Cross-sectional reference data for VO2peak by testing modality. Treadmill in the upper panel, and cycle ergometry in the lower panel. Each age-group corresponds to the given decade, not the exact age. Some data collected from graphs or adapted from similar age-groups.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Overview of longitudinal declines in VO2peak from various studies on non-athletes. Mean age at first measurement and length of follow-up for each study is depicted by the start and length of the given lines, respectively. The average annual change is denoted in text with corresponding colour as the given study. Some data are extracted from figures in corresponding publications, and thus may be somewhat inaccurate. The study by Plowman et al., 1979 reported values by different age groups, but values were pooled due to low numbers in several groups. Annotation * = cycle ergometry. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Comparison of data on absolute (left panel) and percentage (right panel) declines in VO2peak from the HUNT (Letnes et al., 2020) and BLSA (Fleg et al., 2005) studies.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Comparison of cross-sectional and longitudinal age-related declines in VO2peak.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Kodama S., Saito K., Tanaka S., et al. Cardiorespiratory fitness as a quantitative predictor of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in healthy men and women. JAMA. 2009;301(19):2024–2035. - PubMed
    1. Harber M.P., Kaminsky L.A., Arena R., et al. Impact of cardiorespiratory fitness on all-cause and disease-specific mortality: advances since 2009. Prog. Cardiovasc. Dis. 2017;60(1):11–20. - PubMed
    1. Ross R., Blair S.N., Arena R., et al. Importance of assessing cardiorespiratory fitness in clinical practice: a case for fitness as a clinical vital sign: a scientific statement from the American Heart association. Circulation. 2016;134(24):e653–e699. - PubMed
    1. de Souza e Silva C.G., Buginga G.C., de Souza e Silva E.A., et al. Prediction of Mortality in Coronary Artery Disease: Role of Machine Learning and Maximal Exercise Capacity. Mayo Clin. Proc. 2022;97(8):1472–1482. doi: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2022.01.016. - DOI - PubMed
    1. M. Martin-Rincon, J.A.L. Calbet, Progress update and challenges on VO2max testing and interpretation, Front. Physiol. 11(September) (2020) 1–8. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources