Fact of the day

Across 17 randomised trials in older adults, resistance training was linked with changes in the internal architecture of muscle, with reported improvements in thickness, fibre pennation angle and fascicle length, though the pooled effect was small and the evidence base thin.

Study design

Meta-analysis

Journal

Arch Gerontol Geriatr

Evidence

preliminary

⚠What it shows: An early signal rather than a settled result: a sweep of all the studies on this found 17 trials with 488 older participants, and the authors themselves warn that the small number of studies and disagreement between them limit the findings. The direction is encouraging; the size is uncertain.Meta-analysis · Arch Gerontol Geriatr