Oxygen uptake at aerobic threshold is inversely associated with fatal cardiovascular and all-cause mortality events.

Plain-language summary

This study set out to see whether how much oxygen a man's body uses at his aerobic threshold, the point where easy effort starts to get hard, predicts his risk of dying. It followed 1,663 middle-aged Finnish men for up to 25 years after a treadmill test. Men with a higher oxygen uptake at that threshold had a lower risk of sudden cardiac death, of fatal heart disease and of death from any cause. Much of that link ran through peak fitness rather than being separate from it. Adding the measure to a standard risk model did not show a clear improvement in prediction, and the authors put it no higher than that it may help. This is the same Finnish cohort of middle-aged men that the sauna studies in this library draw on, so those studies and this one are not independent of each other.

Key findings

• Higher oxygen uptake at the aerobic threshold went with lower risks of sudden cardiac death, fatal heart disease and death from any cause.
• The link was partly dependent on peak oxygen uptake, so it is not fully separate from overall fitness.
• Adding the measure to a standard risk model did not show a clear improvement in predicting heart disease deaths over 25 years.