PINK
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Physical Activity, Immune Function and INflammation in Kidney Patients – A Pilot Study
IRAS ID
184466
Contact name
Alice Smith
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
UHL
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
People with kidney problems often suffer from poor quality of life and many health problems. For example, kidney disease patients are more likely to develop heart disease, and many of them find that their muscles become weak and they feel very tired.
Having a kidney transplant can transform the life of someone whose kidneys have failed through disease. However, the new kidney does not usually work as well as those of a healthy person and transplant patients can still suffer from a variety of health problems. They also have to take drugs to prevent their immune system rejecting the new kidney, which can cause side effects.
We all know that exercise is good for us. In healthy people it improves the health of the heart and strengthens the muscles. Therefore, exercise might be able to help people with kidney disease too, but there has not yet been much research to study this.
We know that having kidney disease affects the cells in the blood which control the immune system. Some of these cells don’t work well, so the body can’t fight infection properly. On the other hand, some of the immune cells become overactive and can damage the inside of the blood vessels – this is one of the important causes of heart disease in kidney patients. Exercise also affects the same cells in the blood. In healthy people the effects of regular moderate exercise tend to improve immune function and reduce the risk of heart disease. However, we cannot assume that exercise will have the same effect on the blood cells in people with kidney disease because the kidney disease itself also affects the blood cells. We don’t yet know how the combination of exercise and kidney disease will affect the blood cells, but we need to understand this so we can advise kidney patients about the best exercise to do.
The PINK study is the first step in finding this out. We will ask kidney patients to do a 20 minute exercise session of brisk walking and we will take blood samples before and after the exercise. We will study the blood cells to see what effect the exercise has on them, and we will ask some healthy people to do the same so we can compare them to the kidney patients.
The results of this study will give us important new information which will help us design exercise programmes suitable for the needs of kidney patients. In the future we will do more research to test how these exercise programmes might help people with kidney disease to enjoy a more active and healthy lifestyle
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EM/0391
Date of REC Opinion
18 Sep 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion