Kidney Beam now clinically proven to improve health related quality of life of kidney disease patients through ground-breaking research trial
This week, Kidney Beam’s clinical lead, Dr. Sharlene Greenwood presented at UK Kidney Week in Newport, Wales on the initial results from The Kidney Beam Trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04872933). The multi-centre randomised controlled waitlist trial, supported by Kidney Research UK, aimed to evaluate clinical value and cost effectiveness of physical activity and wellbeing interventions delivered on the Kidney Beam digital platform.
Previous clinical trials in this area have failed to show physical activity interventions resulting in an improvement to health related quality of life, so The Kidney Beam Trial wanted to look at physical activity intervention using a digital platform, focusing on not only clinical value and cost effectiveness, but also other outcomes such as health related quality of life, physical function, patient activation, fatigue, anxiety, and depression. After all, symptoms such as fatigue and mental health have been highlighted by people living with kidney disease as being more important to them than clinical outcomes such as mortality.
It is known that 28% of adults in the general population are insufficiently active, and people living with kidney disease are at particular risk from physical inactivity and this can lead to accelerated disease progression and a poorer health related quality of life. Back in 2020 Dr. Greenwood and the team at King’s College Hospital turned to existing digital health platform, Beam to develop their online exercise solution specifically for kidney patients. The result of this collaboration was Kidney Beam. Kidney Beam offers access to progressive programs, live and on-demand classes, community and motivational support.
The Kidney Beam Trial recruited and randomised 340 participants, assigning them to either the Kidney Beam intervention or to a waitlist control group. Kidney Beam participants were encouraged to attend twice weekly sessions of live or on-demand kidney rehabilitation over the 12-week intervention, and were also offered disease specific education sessions and support from a physiotherapy assistant who was trained in motivational interviewing.
While we are awaiting full results of the trial through publication, we are excited to share some of the stand-out findings from the study, as shared by Dr. Greenwood in her presentation at UK Kidney Week.
After 12 weeks, researchers compared changes in health related quality of life and physical function between the two groups. Dr. Greenwood and her team found that patients in the Kidney Beam group showed significant and clinically important improvements in health related quality of life.
The Kidney Beam intervention specifically was effective for the primary outcome of mental health related quality of life, as well as the secondary outcomes of physical function, symptom burden, social interaction, anxiety and depression and patient activation. The results will facilitate implementation of current guidelines on physical activity and inform future clinical practice. The validation of Kidney Beam is of huge importance for people with kidney disease because despite the clinical significance of physical activity programs on health outcomes, very few local services offer this support in-person and now there is a trusted online alternative.
These positive results show that Kidney Beam is a lifestyle intervention that can improve the management of people living with kidney disease, a viable and scalable model to be adapted for use globally and other chronic conditions that are associated with sedentary behaviour and poor physical and mental health.