Benefit of Wearing an Activity Tracker in Sarcoidosis.

Marjolein Drent,Bert Strookappe,Marjon Elfferich,Ellen Breedveld,Jolanda De Vries

doi:10.3390/jpm10030097

Abstract

Sarcoidosis causes many disabling symptoms, including fatigue and exercise limitations, which have been shown to improve by physical activity programs. The aim of this study was to estimate the effect of continuous activity monitoring using an electronic activity tracker (AT) on exercise performance and fatigue of sarcoidosis patients, compared to controls (cohort study), and the effect of additional personal coaching (randomized trial) over a period of 3 months. Fifty-four sarcoidosis patients received an AT (Group Ia: 27 with coaching and Group Ib: 27 without). A historical group of sarcoidosis patients (Group II; n = 41) who did not follow a physical activity program served as controls. Exercise performance of patients wearing an AT (Group I) improved compared with controls (Group II), including the 6MWD, % predicted (∆4.4 ± 9.1 versus ∆0.7 ± 5.0, respectively), and fatigue levels decreased (∆−3.9 ± 5.7 versus ∆−1.8 ± 5.3). Patients with coaching (Group Ia) showed greater improvement of exercise capacity over time than patients without coaching (Group Ib) as shown by the Steep Ramp Test results (watts: ∆20.2 ± 33.8 versus ∆5.7 ± 26.4; and SRT, VO2max, % predicted: ∆1.6 ± 2.6 versus ∆0.7 ± 2.3). Sarcoidosis patients wearing an AT achieved improvement of exercise performance and reduction of fatigue. We therefore recommend encouraging sarcoidosis patients to wear an AT to stimulate physical activity and reduce fatigue. The additional benefit of coaching needs to be explored in future studies.

Highlights

Sarcoidosis patients often suffer from organ-related symptoms and from disabling non-specific, non-organ-related symptoms, such as fatigue, reduced muscle strength, loss of physical condition, reduction of physical activity (PA) in daily life, and pain [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Sixty-three patients were enrolled in this study
The included patient groups did not differ from the control group regarding demographic and clinical variables, except for sex (p = 0.01 see Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Sarcoidosis patients often suffer from organ-related symptoms and from disabling non-specific, non-organ-related symptoms, such as fatigue, reduced muscle strength, loss of physical condition, reduction of physical activity (PA) in daily life, and pain [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Fatigue is the most frequently reported symptom in sarcoidosis patients, regardless of the clinical presentation, varying from 50 to 90% [3,5,9]. Interventions involving technology that is readily accessible on a daily basis to monitor activity levels can support care providers in encouraging patients to achieve behavioral changes [19]. These interventions may be an effective strategy to provide PA coaching without increasing time demands on primary care providers [20,21]. In a recent study by our group, we found that wearing an AT stimulated patients to be more physically active [26]

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