| Summary: | Background: Cardiopulmonary fitness and low calorie diets have been shown to reduce inflammation but few studies have been conducted in individuals with elevated blood pressure (BP) in a randomized intervention setting. Thereby, adhesion biomarkers, e.g., soluble intercellular adhesion molecule (sICAM)-3, have not been examined so far. Methods: Sixty-eight sedentary prehypertensive and mildly hypertensive individuals (mean age ± SEM: 45 ± 1 years; mean BP: 141/84 ± 1/1 mmHg) were randomized to one of three 12-week intervention groups: cardio training and caloric reduction, cardio training alone, or wait-list control group. Plasma levels of inflammatory, adhesion and prothrombotic biomarkers were assessed. In a second step, intervention groups were combined to one sample and multivariate regression analyses were applied in order to account for exercise and diet behavior changes. Results: There were no significant differences among the intervention groups. In the combined sample, greater caloric reduction was associated with a larger increase of sICAM-3 (<i>p</i><i> </i>= 0.026) and decrease of C-reactive protein (<i>p</i> = 0.018) as a result of the interventions. More cardio training was associated with increases of sICAM-3 (<i>p</i><i> </i>= 0.046) as well as interleukin-6 (<i>p</i><i> </i>= 0.004) and a decrease of tumor necrosis factor- (<i>p</i> = 0.017) levels. Higher BP predicted higher plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI)-1 (<i>p</i><i> </i>= 0.001), and greater fitness predicted lower PAI-1 levels (<i>p</i> = 0.006) after the intervention. Conclusions: In prehypertensive and hypertensive patients, plasma levels of the adhesion molecule sICAM-3 and inflammatory biomarkers have different response patterns to cardio training with and without caloric reduction. Such anti-inflammatory and anti-thrombotic effects may have implications for the prevention of atherothrombotic cardiovascular disease among individuals at increased risk.
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