Frailty Prevention in COPD: Role of exercise and physical activity
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Frailty Prevention in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): Role of Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Physical Activity.
IRAS ID
267147
Contact name
Gavin Sandercock
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Research studies have shown that frailty (state of slowness and body function decline) occur in a quarter of people living with COPD and pre-frailty occur in half of the population. And we also know that frailty and pre-frailty are reversible in people with COPD after engagement in 6 – 8week course of pulmonary rehabilitation (a combination of structured exercise and educational programme). But we do not know the effect of long-term pulmonary rehabilitation or physical activity on pre-frailty and frailty or if we can prevent frailty from occurring in people with COPD after long term exercise. Research has shown that people with prefrail COPD will become frail 4 years after their stage classification. To date no research has been carried out to find out if we can stop pre-frail COPD patients from becoming frail. Therefore, this research aim to find out if long term pulmonary rehabilitation combined with physical activity or physical activity alone done over 4 years can prevent frailty occurring in people who were classified pre-frailty in their COPD.
It's seemingly a public health issue allowing such a large population of people becoming frail, creating complex health issues poor quality of life and health and social care burden. Therefore, something should be done to look into healthcare strategies that be used to prevent frailty occurring in 50% of COPD population. Since pulmonary rehabilitation has been shown to reduce/reverse frailty in COPD then this study hope that if applied long term in combination with physical activity we might be able to stop frailty from occurring after 4 years of engagement in exercise programme.REC name
London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1783
Date of REC Opinion
26 Nov 2019
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion