IL6 and congestive heart failure: However, regarding the effect of endurance training in elderly patients, it has been shown that six months of endurance training may reduce the expression of TNF-α (from 1.9 ± 0.4 to 1.2 ± 0.3 relative U, p<0.05), IL-6 (from 71.3 ± 16.5 to 41.3± 8.8 relative U, p<0.05) and IL-1β (from 2.7 ± 1.1 to 1.4 ± 0.6 relative U, p=0.02) in skeletal muscle of chronic heart failure patients while systemic levels of these cytokines were unchanged (110).