Physical activity improves early with customized text messages in patients with heart problems

Effects from the mobile health intervention later tapered off

2024-07-24

(Press-News.org) Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce your risk of heart disease or having a second cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack or stroke.

As more people use wearable technology, such as smartwatches, health care researchers continue to explore whether it can successfully promote physical activity.

That includes customized messages designed to encourage individual patients to be more active in their current location, like walking outside when the weather is nice.

In such a study led by the University of Michigan Health Frankel Cardiovascular Center, personalized text messages effectively promoted increased physical activity for patients after significant heart events — such as a heart attack or surgery — but those effects later diminished.

The research, published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, comes from the Virtual AppLication-supported Environment To Increase Exercise Study, or VALENTINE Study.

The randomized clinical trial assessed, over six months, differences in physical activity levels for over 200 patients enrolled in cardiac rehabilitation who did or did not receive a mobile health intervention promoting exercise. The text messages accounted for context, including the weather, time and day of the week.

Over the first 30 days, Apple Watch users who received the intervention experienced a 10% increase in step count in the hour following a message, while Fitbit users saw a 17% increase.

“Our study shows incredible promise for simple, low cost interventions delivered through mobile technology and their potential to help prevent secondary cardiovascular events in patients,” said first author Jessica R. Golbus, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine-cardiology at University of Michigan Medical School and member of the U-M Precision Health initiative.

Cardiac rehabilitation is a medically supervised program that combines physical activity with lifestyle changes to improve health after cardiovascular events. While recommended, it remains widely underutilized.

After one month, the effects of the personalized messaging began to wear off for both Apple Watch and Fitbit users.

This regression, researchers say, is natural as patients get accustomed to the messages. However, the team remains optimistic that they can further improve the mobile health intervention through better tailoring over time.

“We learned a lot in this study on how patients could better use digital health tools like smartwatches in the future,” said Brahmajee Nallamothu, M.D., M.P.H., senior author and professor of internal medicine-cardiology at U-M Medical School.

“While the most consistent effects were seen in the first month after smartwatch use, this study was conducted will allow us to further narrow down on how different individuals are likely to be impacted. This is an incredibly exciting time in the field of mobile health technology.”

Additional authors: Jieru Shi, M.S., Rachel Stevens, V.Swetha E. Jeganathan, MBBS, Evan Luff, M.S., Bhramar Mukherjee, Ph.D., Sarah Kohnstamm, M.D., Sachin Kheterpal, M.D., Kenneth Resnicow, Ph.D., Walter Dempsey, Ph.D., Predrag Klasnja, Ph.D., all of University of Michigan, Kashvi Gupta, MBBS, of University of Missouri Kansas City, Thomas Boyden, M.D., of Corewell Health, Vlad Taralunga, B.S.E., Vik Kheterpal, M.D., both of CareEvolution, and Susan Murphy, Ph.D., of Harvard University.

Funding/disclosures: Golbus receives funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH; L30HL143700, 1K23HL168220) and PCORI. Dr Nallamothu is a principal investigator or coinvestigator on research grants from the NIH, VA HSR&D and the American Heart Association. He also receives compensation as editor-in-chief of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Paper cited: “Text Messages to Promote Physical Activity in Patients With Cardiovascular Disease: A Micro-Randomized Trial of a Just-In-Time Adaptive Intervention,” Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. DOI: 0.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.123.010731

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Sharing brain images can foster new neuroscience discoveries

2024-07-24

DALLAS, July 24, 2024 — In this era of machine learning and artificial intelligence, harnessing large-scale neuroimaging can facilitate new discoveries in neuroscience research.[1] To that end, the American Heart Association, celebrating 100 years of lifesaving service in 2024, has awarded a two-year, $460,000 grant to a consortium of three academic medical centers to work collaboratively and share de-identified imaging data from individuals enrolled in its Get With The Guidelines® – Stroke registry. A team at Yale University will ...

Guideline on management of central airway obstruction released by CHEST

2024-07-24

Glenview, Illinois – The American College of Chest Physicians® (CHEST) recently released a new clinical guideline on central airway obstruction (CAO). Published in the journal CHEST®, the guideline contains 12 evidence-based recommendations to guide the management of both malignant and nonmalignant CAO. “Central airway obstruction is associated with a poor prognosis, and the management of CAO is highly variable dependent on the provider expertise and local resources. By releasing this guideline, the panel hopes to standardize the definition ...

Same-sex marriage recognition helps countries attract, retain highly skilled workers

2024-07-24

PULLMAN, Wash. – Marriage equality appears to have a major economic benefit for countries. Washington State University researchers found that European countries that recognized same-sex marriages kept more of their highly skilled workers from emigrating to the U.S. The researchers analyzed 20 years of data on HB1 visas, which are reserved for immigrants to the U.S. with advanced degrees and specialized skills. From 2000-2019, a total of 13 European Union countries legalized same-sex marriage—and ...

Mixed approach to reforestation better than planting or regeneration alone

2024-07-24

DURHAM, NC – Reforestation in low- and middle-income countries can remove up to 10 times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at lower cost than previously estimated, making this a potentially more important option to fight climate change, according to a study in Nature Climate Change. Reforestation regrows trees on degraded lands where human activities removed original forests. Most current reforestation programs focus on tree planting alone, but the study estimates that nearly half of all suitable reforestation locations would be more effective at sequestering carbon if forests were allowed to grow back ...

Warehousing industry increases health-harming pollutants

2024-07-24

WASHINGTON (July 24, 2024)--America's demand for products delivered to the doorstep has led to a dramatic increase in e-commerce and the warehousing industry. A first-of-a-kind study now shows that people living in communities located next to these large warehouses are exposed to 20% more of a traffic-related air pollutant that can lead to asthma and other life-threatening health conditions. “Increased truck traffic to and from these recently built large warehouses means people living downwind are inhaling an increased amount of harmful nitrogen dioxide pollution,” said Gaige Kerr, lead author of the study and an assistant research ...

Variants in the genome affect DNA methylation

2024-07-24

A new study by scientists at deCODE Genetics, a subsidiary of Amgen, shows that sequence variants drive the correlation between DNA methylation and gene expression. The same variants are linked to various diseases and other human traits. The research was published today in the scientific journal Nature Genetics under the title: The correlation between CpG methylation and gene expression is driven by sequence variants. Nanopore sequencing is a new technology developed by ONT (Oxford Nanopore Technology), that enables us to ...

How well does tree planting work in climate change fight? It depends, OSU research shows

2024-07-24

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Using trees as a cost-effective tool against climate change is more complicated than simply planting large numbers of them, an international collaboration that includes an Oregon State University scientist has shown. Jacob Bukoski of the OSU College of Forestry and seven other researchers synthesized data from thousands of reforestation sites in 130 countries and found that roughly half the time it’s better just to let nature take its course. Findings of the study led by Conservation International were published today in Nature ...

Komodo dragons have iron-coated teeth to rip apart their prey

2024-07-24

Scientists have discovered that the serrated edges of Komodo dragons’ teeth are tipped with iron. Led by researchers from King’s College London, the study gives new insight into how Komodo dragons keep their teeth razor-sharp and may provide clues to how dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex killed and ate their prey. Native to Indonesia, Komodo dragons are the largest living species of monitor lizard, averaging around 80kg. Deadly predators, Komodos have sharp, curved teeth similar to many carnivorous dinosaurs. They eat almost any kind of meat, from smaller reptiles and birds to deer, horses or ...

Nanoscale device simultaneously steers and shifts frequency of optical light, pointing the way to future wireless communication channels

2024-07-24

It is a scene many of us are familiar with: You're working on your laptop at the local coffee shop with maybe a half dozen other laptop users—each of you is trying to load websites or stream high-definition videos, and all are craving more bandwidth. Now imagine that each of you had a dedicated wireless channel for communication that was hundreds of times faster than the Wi-Fi we use today, with hundreds of times more bandwidth. That dream may not be far off thanks to the development of metasurfaces—tiny engineered sheets that can reflect and otherwise direct light in desired ways. In ...

African research to benefit from new open data management course

2024-07-24

Open data practices in African research institutions will be bolstered thanks to a new online course for librarians to coincide with International Open Access Week (21-27 October 2024). The Open Data Management Foundational Course – to be offered entirely free over four weeks by open data experts – is a direct response to calls to strengthen the research data management capacity of librarians in Africa. The course will be facilitated by AfLIA, the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions, as part of an ongoing collaboration ...

Physical activity improves early with customized text messages in patients with heart problems

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: