Effects of Inactivity, Weight Gain and Antitubercular Chemotherapy Upon Lung Function in Working Coal-Miners

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Abstract
Lung Function and Physiological responses to sub-maximal exercise have been studied in 113 working coalworkers with early progressive massive fibrosis (Category A) before and after a 3 month period in a sanatorium, and again 9 months later. Over the period, half these subjects received antitubercular chemotherapy. They were selected at random from a larger group of whom the remaining 57 men continued to work in the mines: they were also studied as controls. The period in a sanatorium without chemotherapy was associated with a gain in body weight which resulted, at rest, in significant reductions in forced expiratory volume, forced vital capacity, functional residual capacity and radiological lung area; during exercise there were proportional increases in oxygen consumption, cardiac frequency and ventilation minute volume. Apart from effects due to the gain in weight, withdrawal from the mines and associated inactivity had singularly little effect upon physiological function. Antitubercular chemotherapy had the effect of lessening the gain in weight which would otherwise have occurred in the sanatorium. It had little direct effect upon performance. Inactivity impairs the function of the circulation and the strength of skeletal muscles (e.g. Tayloret al., 1949). On theoretical grounds, it may also affect indices of lung function, including vital capacity, (Hutchinson, 1846), and transfer factor (diffusing capacity, Cotes, 1967); however, no practical study of inactivity and lung function appears to have been undertaken. We have, therefore, used the opportunity of a controlled therapeutic trial for early progressive massive fibrosis of coalworkers, (Gilson, 1964), to examine this subject, which may be important for medical rehabilitation, as well as for understanding the mechanism of physical training. The results suggest that a 3 month period of relative inactivity following withdrawal from mining has little direct effect upon lung function or performance of submaximal exercise; it may however lead to an increase in body weight which has a deleterious effect.

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