Effectiveness of home-based and remotely supervised aerobic exercise in Parkinson's disease: a double-blind, randomised controlled trial

Publication date: Available online 11 September 2019Source: The Lancet NeurologyAuthor(s): Nicolien M van der Kolk, Nienke M de Vries, Roy P C Kessels, Hilde Joosten, Aeilko H Zwinderman, Bart Post, Bastiaan R BloemSummaryBackgroundHigh-intensity aerobic exercise might attenuate the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but high-quality evidence is scarce. Moreover, long-term adherence remains challenging. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of aerobic exercise—gamified and delivered at home, to promote adherence—on relieving motor symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease with mild disease severity who were on common treatment regimes.MethodsIn this single-centre, double-blind, randomised controlled trial (Park-in-Shape), we recruited sedentary patients with Parkinson's disease from the outpatient clinic at Radboudumc, Nijmegen, Netherlands. Patients were made aware of the study either by their treating neurologist or via information in the waiting room. Patients could also contact the study team via social media. We included patients aged 30–75 years with a Hoehn and Yahr stage of 2 or lower, who were on stable dopaminergic medication. Patients were randomly assigned (in a 1:1 ratio) to either aerobic exercise done on a stationary home-trainer (aerobic intervention group) or stretching (active control group) by means of a web-based system with minimisation for sex and medication status (treated or untreated) and permuted blocks of varying sizes of more than two (unk...
Source: The Lancet Neurology - Category: Neurology Source Type: research