PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Cycling study transforms heart health of dialysis patients

Cycling at moderate intensity during dialysis could drastically improve the heart health of patients with kidney failure and result in significant savings for the NHS, according to new research by the University of Leicester

2021-04-08
(Press-News.org) Cycling at moderate intensity during dialysis could drastically improve the heart health of patients with kidney failure and result in significant savings for the NHS, according to new research by the University of Leicester supported by the charity Kidney Research UK and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Leicester Biomedical Research Centre.

Patients in the CYCLE-HD study were offered 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise on a specially adapted bicycle during their regular dialysis sessions. Dialysis can lead to long-term scarring of the heart, which can accumulate over time and lead to heart failure. The study set out to examine whether exercise could reduce these side-effects.

After six months, participants' hearts were assessed with an MRI scan and compared with pre-trial imaging. Patients who had cycled showed improvements in several aspects of heart health - their hearts were more like a 'normal' size, they had less scarring, and there was less stiffness of the major blood vessels.

Analysis of the study also demonstrated a saving in healthcare costs of more than £1,400 per patient which, when balanced against the cost of the exercise equipment, could result in significant savings for the NHS.

James Burton is a Professor of Renal Medicine and Honorary Consultant Nephrologist at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, and was chief investigator on the study. He said:

"We know that being more active can help reduce the risk of heart disease, as well as helping to control weight, reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, and improve mental health.

"For all those reasons - but especially because the risk of heart disease is so high - keeping active is particularly important for people on dialysis. Unfortunately, by the time that someone has travelled to and from the dialysis unit, and spent four hours connected up to the dialysis machine, there's very little time to do anything else that day, and the reality is that this happens three times a week for most patients.

"The findings of this study offer significant improvements to the heart health of dialysis patients which may have a major impact on their outlook."

Lord Bethell, Minister for Innovation, said:

"Keeping active has a range of health benefits - both physical and mental - and the importance of exercise has become increasingly apparent over recent months with its impact on COVID-19.

"We have long been aware of the impact of exercise on other diseases and this research by the University of Leicester is testament to the ways we're constantly looking to improve people's health - through better understanding of conditions, faster diagnosis and improving treatment.

"Not only does this research show we can reduce the side effects of dialysis, but it could also mean a significant saving for the NHS."

Professor Jeremy Hughes, kidney doctor and chair of trustees at Kidney Research UK said:

"We are delighted to have supported this fascinating study, which shows how exercising while on dialysis can have so many benefits. Cycling can keep patients active and help to pass the long periods of time they spend attached to their dialysis machines.

"However, this study demonstrates that this simple intervention keeps their hearts healthy and offsets the major heart risk associated with kidney failure. We hope this research will lead to other studies examining how to roll it out to other dialysis units across the country."

Dialysis is a life-saving procedure for people living with kidney failure, removing waste products from the body. More than 24,000 patients in the UK typically undergo haemodialysis therapy three times a week at four hours each time.

A quarter of deaths among haemodialysis patients in the UK between 2009 and 2018 were as a result of cardiovascular disease, according to the UK Renal Registry.

Researchers will now examine the possibilities of a wider rollout of the scheme to benefit patients across the UK, and now forms part of The Renal Association's haemodialysis guidelines.

The CYCLE-HD study was undertaken by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Transforming crop and timber production could reduce species extinction risk by 40%

2021-04-08
Ensuring sustainability of crop and timber production would mitigate the greatest drivers of terrestrial wildlife decline, responsible for 40% of the overall extinction risk of amphibians, birds and mammals, according to a paper published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. These results were generated using a new metric which, for the first time, allows business, governments and civil society to assess their potential contributions to stemming global species loss, and can be used to calculate national, regional, sector-based, or institution-specific targets. The work was led by the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Post-2020 Taskforce, hosted by Newcastle ...

Study calls for urgent climate change action to secure global food supply

2021-04-08
New Curtin University-led research has found climate change will have a substantial impact on global food production and health if no action is taken by consumers, food industries, government, and international bodies. Published in one of the highest-ranking public health journals, the Annual Review of Public Health, the researchers completed a comprehensive 12-month review of published literature on climate change, healthy diet and actions needed to improve nutrition and health around the world. Lead researcher John Curtin Distinguished Emeritus Professor Colin Binns, from the Curtin School of Population Health at Curtin University, said climate change has had a detrimental impact on health and food production for the past 50 years and far more needs to be ...

Curtin research finds introduced honeybee may pose threat to native bees

2021-04-08
A Curtin University study has found the introduced European honeybee could lead to native bee population decline or extinction when colonies compete for the same nectar and pollen sources in urban gardens and areas of bush. Published in the 'Biological Journal of the Linnean Society', the research found competition between the native bees and the introduced European honeybee could be particularly intense in residential gardens dominated by non-native flowers, and occurred when the bees shared the same flower preferences. Under these conditions, it would appear that European honeybees, being very abundant, and effective foragers, with the ...

Graphene: Everything under control

Graphene: Everything under control
2021-04-08
How can large amounts of data be transferred or processed as quickly as possible? One key to this could be graphene. The ultra-thin material is only one atomic layer thick, and the electrons it contains have very special properties due to quantum effects. It could therefore be very well suited for use in high-performance electronic components. Up to this point, however, there has been a lack of knowledge about how to suitably control certain properties of graphene. A new study by a team of scientists from Bielefeld and Berlin, together with researchers from other research institutes in Germany and Spain, is changing this. The team's findings have been published in the journal Science Advances. Consisting of carbon atoms, graphene is a material just one atom ...

Evolution of outcomes for patients hospitalized during the COVID pandemic

2021-04-08
As SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread in France, a thorough characterization of hospital care needs and of the trajectories of hospital patients, as well as how they have changed over time, is essential to support planning. This led scientists from the Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases Unit at the Institut Pasteur and the University of Cambridge to develop a probabilistic model that can be used to analyze detailed patient trajectories based on 198,846 hospitalizations in France during the first nine months of the pandemic (from March to No-vember 2020). These findings were published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe on March 20, 2021. This ...

Low-dose CT for right colonic diverticulitis an alternate diagnosis of appendicitis

Low-dose CT for right colonic diverticulitis an alternate diagnosis of appendicitis
2021-04-08
Leesburg, VA, April 8, 2021--According to an open-access article in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), IV contrast-enhanced 2-millisievert CT (2-mSv CT) is comparable to conventional-dose CT (CDCT) for the diagnosis of right colonic diverticulitis. "By mitigating concern of missed diagnosis of right colonic diverticulitis, our results further support the use of low-dose CT for suspected appendicitis," wrote first author Hae Young Kim from the department of radiology at Korea's Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. "To our knowledge," Kim et al. maintained, "this is the first study to formally measure the diagnostic performance of CT for right colonic diverticulitis." Kim and colleagues' large pragmatic randomized controlled trial data included 3,074 patients ...

System simulating emergency in electric power system faster than in real time created at TPU

System simulating emergency in electric power system faster than in real time created at TPU
2021-04-08
Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University have created a decision support system (DSS) for dispatching personnel of electric power systems (EPS). The system allows dispatchers to quickly test their actions on the management of the EPS, to control and evaluate their consequences using a digital simulator in a regime faster than real time. The article devoted to the research work is published in the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (Q1, IF 6.074) academic journal, one of the most peer-reviewed journals in energy, energy technology, electrical engineering and electronics ...

Unique method to fabricate freeform structures of thermoplastics in microparticulate gels

Unique method to fabricate freeform structures of thermoplastics in microparticulate gels
2021-04-08
Fabrication of 3D freeform structures of thermoplastics involving overhang (non-anchored) structures is successfully showcased by fused deposition modeling (FDM) and direct ink writing (DIW), yet limited in terms of applicable materials and conditions of printing. 3D printing of freeform structures requires support materials that enable printing of thermoplastics in non-anchored locations. In order to address the difficulty of freeform fabrication via extrusion-based printing, the use of microparticulate gels as embedding media has been widely explored. Such methods are collectively termed embedded 3D printing (e3DP). In these demonstrations, ...

3D imaging creates molecular maps of hidden microbial communities on coral reefs

3D imaging creates molecular maps of hidden microbial communities on coral reefs
2021-04-08
Researchers from the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa, University of British Columbia (UBC), San Diego State University (SDSU), and elsewhere have created 3D molecular maps of bacteria, viruses, and biochemicals across coral colonies along with their interacting organisms such as algae and other competing corals. This allowed the team to discover specific microbial and viral functions that appear to be key components of the coral microbiome. The study, published recently in Frontiers of Marine Science, used a novel combination of state-of-the-art molecular methods with cutting-edge 3D imaging techniques to create high-resolution molecular maps on coral reef organisms. Healthy coral reefs ...

Weather radar for ecological forecasting can lessen hazards for migratory birds

Weather radar for ecological forecasting can lessen hazards for migratory birds
2021-04-08
Forecasts aren't just for the weather. Scientists can use weather radar and related technology to chart the journeys of billions of migratory birds, which can help protect these global travelers from a growing array of threats. In a new breakthrough on this front, a team led by Colorado State University used millions of observations from 143 weather surveillance radars to evaluate a forecasting system for nocturnal bird migration in the United States. Using these tools, the team discovered that a mere 10 nights of action are required to reduce risk to 50% of avian migrants passing over a ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Modesty and boastfulness – perception depends on usual performance

Do sweeteners increase your appetite? New evidence from randomised controlled trial says no 

Women with obesity do not need to gain weight during pregnancy, new study suggests

Individuals with multiple sclerosis face substantially greater risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19, despite high rates of vaccination

Study shows obesity in childhood associated with a more than doubling of risk of developing multiple sclerosis in early adulthood

Rice Emerging Scholars Program receives $2.5M NSF grant to boost STEM education

Virtual rehabilitation provides benefits for stroke recovery

Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Biofuels could help island nations survive a global catastrophe, study suggests

NJIT research team discovering how fluids behave in nanopores with NSF grant

New study shows association of historical housing discrimination and shortfalls in colon cancer treatment

Social media use may help to empower plastic surgery patients

Q&A: How to train AI when you don't have enough data

Wayne State University researchers uncover potential treatment targets for Zika virus-related eye abnormalities

Discovering Van Gogh in the wild: scientists unveil a new gecko species

Small birds spice up the already diverse diet of spotted hyenas in Namibia

Imaging detects transient “hypoxic pockets” in the mouse brain

Dissolved organic matter could be used to track and improve the health of freshwaters

Indoor air quality standards in public buildings would boost health and economy, say international experts

Positive associations between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

New imaging method illuminates oxygen's journey in the brain

Researchers discover key gene for toxic alkaloid in barley

New approach to monitoring freshwater quality can identify sources of pollution, and predict their effects

Bidirectional link between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

Cell division quality control ‘stopwatch’ uncovered

Vaccine protects cattle from bovine tuberculosis, may eliminate disease

Andrew Siemion to receive the SETI Institute’s 2024 Drake Award

New study shows how the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy proves effective for locally advanced penile squamous cell carcinoma

Study flips treatment paradigm in bilateral Wilms tumor, shows resistance to chemotherapy may point toward favorable outcomes

[Press-News.org] Cycling study transforms heart health of dialysis patients
Cycling at moderate intensity during dialysis could drastically improve the heart health of patients with kidney failure and result in significant savings for the NHS, according to new research by the University of Leicester