Strength gains waned in seniors with type 2 diabetes and muscle loss
A 24-week randomized trial tested supervised exercise followed by self-managed training in 62 adults aged 65 or older with diabetes and muscle loss.
Our read
Interventions- Studied:
- Randomized trial in 62 older adults with T2DM and sarcopenia, 24 weeks (Registered NCT07398495)
- What changed:
- Strength gains over usual care faded by 24 weeks after training became self-managed
- The catch:
- Changes in diet or lifestyle could not be fully accounted for
- In the record:
- The 1,467th paper on resistance training with results in people; 3,629 on record in all. Its result on handgrip strength agrees with 60 of 68 other findings on record; 8 found no change.
Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Sixty-two adults aged 65 or older with type 2 diabetes and sarcopenia, meaning low muscle mass with weakness or impaired physical performance, joined a randomized trial in Taiwan. Their median age was 72; 67.7% were women. Participants received usual care alone or a 24-week elastic-band exercise program: roughly 30 minutes, three to five times weekly. The first 12 weeks included instruction, weekly calls and reminders; the next 12 were self-managed at home.
After 12 weeks, training improved grip strength, repeated chair-standing performance and a sarcopenia screening score compared with usual care. These benefits diminished by 24 weeks, when a muscle-mass measure showed a modest favorable change. Blood sugar control showed no clear intervention-related change. Quality-of-life scores showed supportive favorable patterns through 24 weeks. No adverse events were reported.
Why it matters
Older adults with diabetes and sarcopenia may need ongoing exercise support to sustain physical function, the authors suggested.
Caveats
The trial did not compare self-management with continued supervision, so it could not isolate the effect of ending supervision. The results may not apply to people with major mobility or cognitive impairments, whom this single-center trial excluded; the trial was registered retrospectively.
From the paper
- Primary outcome
For SMI, the interaction did not meet this threshold at 12 weeks [β = 0.05 kg/m²; 95% CI, 0.01 to 0.08; P = 0.02], but reached statistical significance at 24 weeks [β = 0.20 kg/m²; 95% CI, 0.05 to 0.34; P = 0.01].
- Harms
No adverse events or unintended effects were reported.
- Limitation
First, the single-center design and modest sample size may limit generalizability.
Quoted word for word from the full text on PubMed Central.
The paper
China Medical University; Chung Shan Medical University Hospital
Acta Diabetologica, Jul 13, 2026, Open access
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