Kidney transplant recipients who exercise regularly preserve the function of their transplanted organ longer and face a lower risk of death, according to a new study.
Severance Hospital said on the 1st that Professor Lee Joo-han of the Department of Transplantation Surgery and Professor Yoon Seo-yeon of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, working with a joint research team from the Armed Forces Capital Hospital, confirmed the link after tracking 12,175 kidney transplant patients for an average of more than seven years using National Health Insurance Service data.
Transplantation is the only treatment that allows patients with end-stage renal disease, who have completely lost kidney function, to come off dialysis and improve their survival rates. Earlier studies had reported that consistent exercise slows the decline of kidney function and lowers mortality risk in patients with chronic renal failure. But those findings could not be applied directly to transplant recipients, who take immunosuppressants for life and depend on a single kidney. Large-scale research analyzing how exercise affects the preservation of transplanted kidney function had been particularly scarce.
The team divided transplant recipients into a group that exercised regularly and a group that did not, then tracked the function of their transplanted kidneys. The group that exercised regularly after surgery had a roughly 28% lower risk of losing function in the transplanted kidney and a roughly 15% lower risk of death than the group that did not. The results held consistently even after adjusting for factors that could influence the outcome, including age, sex, coexisting conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and kidney function.
The team also found that maintaining a certain volume of exercise consistently matters more than the intensity of the workout. Moderate exercise such as brisk walking, done regularly for about 150 minutes a week, was the most effective, the researchers said.
"We now have evidence that regular exercise can improve survival rates for both the transplanted kidney and the patient," Lee said. "Actively incorporating exercise counseling tailored to each patient's condition into clinical care should help improve long-term treatment outcomes."
The findings were published in a recent issue of the International Journal of Surgery.
