EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2025
MINNEAPOLIS — While many people with neuromuscular diseases currently face a future without a cure, a new study finds that a personalized exercise and coaching program could improve their fitness and overall health. The study is published on June 4, 2025, online in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The study looked at people with a variety of neuromuscular diseases that cause muscle weakness and loss, including muscular dystrophies; post-polio syndrome, a condition that appears decades after a polio infection; and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, which affects nerves in the arms and legs.
“Physical inactivity is common among people with neuromuscular diseases, often due to symptoms such as muscle weakness, fatigue and pain,” said study author Eric Voorn, PhD, of Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “Our study found that personalized home-based aerobic exercise combined with coaching is a safe and effective way to improve physical fitness in people with these diseases.”
The study involved 91 people with an average age of 64 who were followed over 18 months.
They were divided into two groups: 44 people who underwent the six-month exercise and coaching program and 47 people who simply continued with usual care for their disease and their usual activities.
Participants in the exercise program completed workouts at home using a stationary bike. Most workouts were done at low intensity and some at high intensity with help from physical therapists through face-to-face and phone sessions. Alongside the exercise, they received coaching to stay motivated and active, including goal setting and feedback on daily activity, with the goal of making it easier to integrate physical activity into daily life.
All participants completed a maximum effort exercise test until exhaustion at four time points to measure physical fitness: at the start of the study; right after exercise program; six months after the program ended; and then again one year after the program ended. Physical fitness was determined by how much oxygen their bodies used during maximum effort exercise. Higher oxygen levels reflect higher physical fitness. Participants wore masks that measure airflow during breathing to determine oxygen levels.
Researchers found that immediately after the exercise program, the exercise group had average oxygen levels 2.2 ml/min/kg higher than the usual care group. This shows that the people in the exercise group had about a 10% increase in physical fitness.
One year after the program, the exercise group had average levels of 23.9 ml/min/kg respectively compared to 20.9 ml/min/kg respectively in the usual care group.
Over the entire study, the exercise group had average oxygen levels 1.7 ml/min/kg higher than the usual care group.
The number of adverse events like falls or pain was similar between the two groups. The exercise group experienced 22 adverse events compared to 25 adverse events in the usual care group.
“Future research should look at how changes in fitness levels affect how well people with neuromuscular diseases can do everyday activities,” said Voorn. “It should also look at ways to motivate people to keep exercising regularly in their daily lives to make sure the benefits of long-term treatments are maintained.”
A limitation of the study was that the COVID-19 pandemic caused changes in participants’ physical activity due to the closure of gyms and sports facilities.
The study was supported by the Prinses Beatrix Spierfonds.
Discover more about brain health at BrainandLife.org, from the American Academy of Neurology. This resource also offers a magazine, podcast, and books that connect patients, caregivers and anyone interested in brain health with the most trusted information, straight from the world’s leading experts in brain health. Follow Brain & Life® on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
The American Academy of Neurology is the leading voice in brain health. As the world’s largest association of neurologists and neuroscience professionals with more than 40,000 members, the AAN provides access to the latest news, science and research affecting neurology for patients, caregivers, physicians and professionals alike. The AAN’s mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all. A neurologist is a doctor who specializes in the diagnosis, care and treatment of brain, spinal cord and nervous system diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, concussion, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, headache and migraine.
Explore the latest in neurological disease and brain health, from the minds at the AAN at AAN.com or find us on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
END
New study: Personalized exercise boosts health for people with neuromuscular disease
2025-06-04
(Press-News.org)
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers discover universal law of quantum vortex dynamics
2025-06-04
An international research collaboration featuring scientists from the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory discovered a fundamental universal principle that governs how microscopic whirlpools interact, collide and transform within quantum fluids, which also has implications for understanding fluids that behave according to classical physics.
The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed new insights into vortex dynamics ...
AI analysis of ancient handwriting provides new age estimates for Dead Sea Scrolls
2025-06-04
An AI program trained to study the handwriting styles of centuries-old manuscripts from the Middle East suggests that many of the Dead Sea Scrolls might be older than previously thought, according to a study published June 4, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Mladen Popović from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and colleagues. This method could give researchers a new way to place undated manuscripts into the timeline of ancient history.
While some ancient manuscripts have dates written on them, giving archaeologists a precise understanding of when they ...
As many as 1 in 5 women with a history of pregnancy or testing for pregnancy report using crisis pregnancy centers across 4 US states
2025-06-04
Between 12 and 20% of women with a history of pregnancy or testing for pregnancy visited crisis pregnancy centers across four U.S. states, according to a new study by Maria Gallo and colleagues from The Ohio State University, U.S., published June 4, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One.
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) typically provide pregnancy and parenting resources and associate with organizations which promote missions focused on preventing abortion, opposing contraception, and advocating for abstinence outside of marriage. They are typically not medically licensed clinics, though they can be perceived as medical facilities or abortion clinics, and often provide ...
Six decades of data on North Atlantic phytoplankton reveal that their biomass has decreased up to 2% annually across most of the Atlantic Ocean, with potentially widespread implications for the wider
2025-06-04
Six decades of data on North Atlantic phytoplankton reveal that their biomass has decreased up to 2% annually across most of the Atlantic Ocean, with potentially widespread implications for the wider food web under climate change
Article URL: https://plos.io/4kq8QEt
Article title: Large, regionally variable shifts in diatom and dinoflagellate biomass in the North Atlantic over six decades
Author countries: Canada
Funding: This work was supported by grants from the Simons Foundation (549935 to AJI, 549937 and 986772 to ZVF), the Ocean Frontier Institute (NWABCP to AJI and ZVF), and Discovery grant awards from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada ...
GPT-generated educational materials for urological cancer patients, translated by AI into five languages, are rated by doctors as easier to read than human-authored versions while being just as clear,
2025-06-04
GPT-generated educational materials for urological cancer patients, translated by AI into five languages, are rated by doctors as easier to read than human-authored versions while being just as clear, accurate and complete
Article URL: https://plos.io/45jsop6
Article title: GPT-4 generates accurate and readable patient education materials aligned with current oncological guidelines: A randomized assessment
Author countries: U.S., Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Russia, Switzerland
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...
Ethical considerations for closing projects "well" in the context of withdrawal of USAID
2025-06-04
Ethical considerations for closing projects "well" in the context of withdrawal of USAID are explored by researchers and members of an affected Philippines disaster-preparedness project.
####
Article URL: https://plos.io/45tYSNr
Article Title: Thinking through abrupt closure in humanitarian assistance: Key ethical considerations in seemingly impossible conditions
Author Countries: Canada, Philippines, United States
Funding: This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada (4330-220-00743 to LE; 4330-220-00743 to IMB; ...
How male mosquitoes target females—and avoid traps
2025-06-04
Embargoed: Not for Release Until 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time Wednesday, 04 June 2025.
Even in the chaotic swarms where they reproduce, male mosquitoes possess a remarkable ability to pick up on the faint sound of a potential mate. A new study from Nagoya University in Japan suggests that males do this by being tuned into a broader range of sounds than females. The findings of this study offer fresh insight into the complex mating behavior of mosquitoes and why catching them in traps in the wild remains such a challenge.
Sound-based traps that mimic the wingbeat of female mosquitoes have long been used in population ...
Unlocking the timecode of the Dead Sea Scrolls
2025-06-04
Since their discovery, the historically and biblically hugely important Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of Jewish and Christian origins. However, while the general date of the scrolls is from the third century BCE until the second century CE, individual manuscripts thus far could not be securely dated. Now, by combining radiocarbon dating, palaeography, and artificial intelligence, an international team of researchers led by the University of Groningen has developed a date-prediction model, called Enoch, that provides much more accurate date estimates for individual manuscripts on empirical grounds. Using this ...
Heatwaves greatly influence parasite burden; likely spread of disease
2025-06-04
New research from scientists at Trinity College Dublin strongly implies that heatwaves have a major influence on the spread of many diseases – and that many existing predictive models have overlooked this complexity. Specifically, the scientists have discovered that differences in heatwaves – such as how much hotter they are than normal temperatures, and how long they last – can increase disease burden by up to 13 times in a commonly used experimental animal model.
Their discovery and its implications come at an important time, with global climate change and related extreme weather events continuing to impact many in various ways (temperatures approached ...
Biggest boom since Big Bang: Hawaiʻi astronomers uncover most energetic explosions in universe
2025-06-04
Astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi’s Institute for Astronomy (IfA) have discovered the most energetic cosmic explosions yet discovered, naming the new class of events “extreme nuclear transients” (ENTs). These extraordinary phenomena occur when massive stars—at least three times heavier than our Sun—are torn apart after wandering too close to a supermassive black hole. Their disruption releases vast amounts of energy visible across enormous distances. The team's findings were recently detailed in the journal Science Advances.
"We’ve observed stars getting ripped ...