Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is effective at improving exercise capacity in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but often produces limited effects on ventilatory constraints, especially in more severe disease. Application of elastic tape (ET) has been proposed as an adjunctive, noninvasive strategy to improve ventilatory mechanics and efficiency. This randomized clinical trial investigated whether adding ET to a standard 8-week PR program would potentiate benefits on exercise capacity, health status, psychological symptoms, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in nonobese men with moderate-to-very severe COPD.
Forty-two nonobese male participants with moderate-to-very severe COPD were randomized to receive either ET or a Sham intervention in conjunction with an 8-week PR program. The study design was a randomized controlled trial. The primary outcome was the endurance shuttle walk test (ESWT) time. Secondary outcomes included the COPD Assessment Test (CAT), the Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ), and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The trial abstract reports statistical comparisons between groups and reports p values and effect sizes for key outcomes. Detailed PR program components, blinding procedures, randomization sequence generation, and adverse event reporting were not provided in the abstract.
The ET group experienced a clinically meaningful improvement in exercise capacity: ESWT time increased by +329 seconds, a change that exceeded the MCID. The ET group demonstrated a moderate-to-large effect size for ESWT (d = 0.89).
Health status improved more in the ET group. CAT scores showed greater improvement in ET than Sham (p = 0.02), and a higher proportion of participants in the ET group achieved the CAT MCID (48% vs. 29%; p = 0.02).
HRQoL measured by the CRQ improved in both groups, with no between-group difference reported in the abstract.
Psychological symptoms improved preferentially in the ET group. Only participants in the ET arm reached MCIDs for depression (HADS-D, p = 0.003) and for anxiety (HADS-A, p = 0.02). The only outcome with a significant time × group interaction was HADS-D (p = 0.001), indicating a differential improvement in depressive symptoms favoring ET over Sham. Reported effect sizes were moderate for HADS-A (d = 0.51) and large for HADS-D (d = 1.02).
HRQoL assessed by the CRQ improved similarly in both ET and Sham groups; the abstract does not report a between-group difference for CRQ domains. Other measures commonly collected in PR trials (for example, spirometry changes, objective ventilatory metrics, or long-term follow-up) were not described in the abstract. Likewise, the abstract does not provide detailed demographic breakdown beyond sex and nonobese status, nor does it report adverse events or tolerability data.
The trial was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethics approval was provided by the Ethics Committee for Analysis of Research Projects (CAPPesq) of the School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo – Hospital das Clínicas (approval 55617321.20000.0068). All adult participants gave written informed consent. Clinical trial registration is NCT05939999, registered on October 26, 2025.
In this randomized trial of nonobese men with moderate-to-very severe COPD, adding elastic tape to an 8-week pulmonary rehabilitation program potentiated improvements in exercise capacity (ESWT), produced greater health-status gains measured by CAT, and yielded superior reductions in anxiety and depressive symptoms (HADS) compared with a Sham adjunct. HRQoL improved in both groups without a reported between-group difference.
The abstract supports ET as a potentially useful, low-risk adjunct to PR for enhancing functional and psychological outcomes in this selected population. The abstract does not report several details that clinicians and researchers may require to interpret applicability: specifics of the PR protocol, ET application method, participant comorbidities and baseline characteristics beyond age/sex categories, adverse events, and longer-term outcomes. These items would need to be reviewed in the full publication for implementation or replication considerations.