Response to Comment on Prior et al. Increased Skeletal Muscle Capillarization Independently Enhances Insulin Sensitivity in Older Adults After Exercise Training and Detraining. Diabetes 2015;64:3386–3395

We thank Dr. Montero for his insightful comment (1) on our recent article (2). His comment raises two interesting questions regarding the finding that increases in skeletal muscle capillary density (CD) contribute to exercise training–induced increases in insulin sensitivity (M/I).First, we address the question of whether the increases in HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) might affect the correlation between CD and M/I by presenting additional analyses. At each time point (baseline, 6-month exercise, and 2-week detraining), we found a moderate correlation between HDL-C levels and M/I ( r = 0.37–0.47), but these did not reach statistical significance. We then incorporated the change in HDL-C (detraining − baseline) into our regression model …