The Beneficial Effects of Cardiac Rehabilitation on the Function and Levels of Endothelial Progenitor Cells.
Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a comprehensive program, which mainly focusses on exercise training, disease evaluation, cardiovascular risk factors control, medication therapy, psychosocial intervention, and patient education. Although the beneficial properties of CR have been widely evidenced, its mechanism is still not completely clarified. To date, endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) have been explored by emerging studies, and evidence has suggested that CR, especially exercise training, significantly increases the function and levels of EPCs, which is likely to elucidate the profiting mechanism of CR. Thus, this review summarises the potential relationship between CR and EPCs with an aim of providing novel directions for future CR research.
Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China.
Yuan
Y
Guo
Department of Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, USA.
Robert Andre
RA
Ledesma
Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China.
Ran
R
Peng
Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China.
Qiong
Q
Liu
Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China. Electronic address: xudanyan02@sina.com.
Danyan
D
Xu
D000072038:Cardiac Rehabilitation; D042783:Endothelial Cells / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology; D005081:Exercise Therapy; D006801:Humans; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology
Cardiac rehabilitation; Cardiovascular disease; Endothelial progenitor cells; Exercise; Neovascularisation