Publications by authors named "Kirsten Rennie"

Background: Exercise promotion interventions for people with Parkinson's disease (PD) are often offered on a face-to-face basis, follow a generic "one-size-fit-all" approach, and are not typically delivered at diagnosis. Considering PD's heterogenous nature, the existing evidence on the merits of exercise on symptom management and the expressed wishes of people living with PD for access to timely and tailored evidence-based information, there is a demand for interventions that are easily accessible, scalable and co-designed with people living with PD.

Objective: Evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a co-designed digital intervention promoting exercise and physical activity, in people newly diagnosed with PD.

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Background And Aims: Cardiovascular disease, associated risk factors and obesity are prevalent after liver transplant and modifiable through lifestyle changes. Understanding what lifestyle interventions and their respective components are effective is essential for translation to clinical practice. We aimed to investigate the effects of diet and physical activity interventions on weight, body mass index and other cardiovascular disease risk factors in liver transplant recipients, and systematically describe the interventions.

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Background: Poor mental health is associated with obesity, but existing studies are either cross-sectional or have long time periods between measurements of mental health and weight. It is, therefore, unclear how small fluctuations in mental wellbeing within individuals predict bodyweight over short time periods, e.g.

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Early detection of highly infectious respiratory diseases, such as COVID-19, can help curb their transmission. Consequently, there is demand for easy-to-use population-based screening tools, such as mobile health applications. Here, we describe a proof-of-concept development of a machine learning classifier for the prediction of a symptomatic respiratory disease, such as COVID-19, using smartphone-collected vital sign measurements.

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Cardiovascular disease and its concurrent risk factors are prevalent after liver transplant (LT). Most of these risk factors are modifiable by diet. We aimed to synthesise the literature reporting the nutritional intake of liver transplant recipients (LTR) and the potential determinants of intake.

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Mutations in thyroid hormone receptor α1 (TRα1) cause Resistance to Thyroid Hormone α (RTHα), a disorder characterized by hypothyroidism in TRα1-expressing tissues including the heart. Surprisingly, we report that treatment of RTHα patients with thyroxine to overcome tissue hormone resistance does not elevate their heart rate. Cardiac telemetry in male, TRα1 mutant, mice indicates that such persistent bradycardia is caused by an intrinsic cardiac defect and not due to altered autonomic control.

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Introduction: Few large studies have evaluated the relationship between resting heart rate (RHR) and cardiorespiratory fitness. Here we examine cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between RHR and fitness, explore factors that influence these relationships, and demonstrate the utility of RHR for remote population monitoring.

Methods: In cross-sectional analyses (The UK Fenland Study: 5,722 women, 5,143 men, aged 29-65y), we measured RHR (beats per min, bpm) while seated, supine, and during sleep.

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Introduction: Cardiovascular events are a major cause of mortality following successful kidney transplantation.Arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs) are considered the best option for haemodialysis, but may contribute to this excess mortality because they promote adverse cardiac remodelling and ventricular hypertrophy. This raises the question whether recipients with a well-functioning kidney transplant should undergo elective AVF ligation.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the interest in implementing mobile health (mHealth) in population-based health studies, but evidence is lacking on engagement and adherence in studies. We conducted a fully remote study for ≥6 months tracking COVID-19 digital biomarkers and symptoms using a smartphone app nested within an existing cohort of adults.

Objective: We aimed to investigate participant characteristics associated with initial and sustained engagement in digital biomarker collection from a bespoke smartphone app and if engagement changed over time or because of COVID-19 factors and explore participants' reasons for consenting to the smartphone substudy and experiences related to initial and continued engagement.

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Introduction: The ability to collect blood samples remotely without the involvement of healthcare professionals is a key element of future telehealth applications. We developed and validated the application of the Drawbridge OneDraw device for use at home for blood sample collection. The device was then applied in a large population-based remote monitoring study to assess changes in SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody levels.

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Background Emerging evidence suggests accruing sedentary behavior (SB) in relatively more prolonged periods may convey additional cardiometabolic risks, but few studies have examined prospective outcomes. We examined the association of SB accumulation patterns with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, and all-cause mortality (ACM). Methods and Results Data were from 7671 EPIC-Norfolk (European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition-Norfolk) cohort middle- to older-aged adults who wore accelerometers on the right hip for 4 to 7 days.

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Childhood obesity is an area of intense concern internationally and is influenced by events during antenatal and postnatal life. Although pregnancy complications, such as gestational diabetes and large-for-gestational-age birthweight have been associated with increased obesity risk in offspring, very few successful interventions in pregnancy have been identified. We describe a study protocol to identify if a reduced calorie diet in pregnancy can reduce adiposity in children to 3 years of age.

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Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) annually affects 35,000 pregnancies in the United Kingdom, causing suboptimal health outcomes to the mother and child. Obesity and excessive gestational weight gain are risk factors for GDM. The Institute of Medicine recommends weight targets for women that are overweight and obese, however, there are no clear guidelines for women with GDM.

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Background: Evidence is lacking on long-term outcomes in unselected patients surviving the first year following myocardial infarction (MI).

Methods And Results: The TIGRIS (long-Term rIsk, clinical manaGement and healthcare Resource utilization of stable coronary artery dISease in post-myocardial infarction patients) prospective registry enrolled 9176 eligible patients aged ≥50 years, 1-3 years post-MI, from 25 countries. All had ≥1 risk factor: age ≥ 65 years, diabetes mellitus, second prior MI, multivessel coronary artery disease, chronic kidney disease (CKD).

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Background: Risk prediction tools are lacking for patients with stable disease some years after myocardial infarction (MI).

Hypothesis: A practical long-term cardiovascular risk index can be developed.

Methods: The long-Term rIsk, Clinical manaGement and healthcare Resource utilization of stable coronary artery dISease in post-myocardial infarction patients prospective global registry enrolled patients 1 to 3 years post-MI (369 centers; 25 countries), all with ≥1 risk factor (age ≥65 years, diabetes mellitus requiring medication, second prior MI, multivessel coronary artery disease, or chronic non-end-stage kidney disease [CKD]).

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Background: Cotinine, a nicotine metabolite, is used to measure tobacco use and exposure, but recommended cut-offs to differentiate tobacco users from those exposed through the environment range from 3 to 58 ng/ml in serum, and 2.5 to 550 ng/ml in urine. Cut-offs may differ by ethnicity, sex and age.

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Background & Aims: There is currently no consensus on which measure of height should be used in older people's body mass index (BMI) calculation. Most estimates of nutritional status include a measurement of body weight and height which should be reliable and accurate, however at present several different methods are used interchangeably. BMI, a key marker in malnutrition assessment, does not reflect age-related changes in height or changes in body composition such as loss of muscle mass or presence of oedema.

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Objective: To assess the 5-year progression of erosions and joint space narrowing (JSN) and their associations with rheumatoid factor (RF) status in 2 large, multicenter, early rheumatoid arthritis cohorts, spanning 25 years.

Methods: Radiographic joint damage was recorded using the Sharp/van der Heijde (SHS) method in the Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Study (ERAS), 1986-2001, and the Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Network (ERAN), 2002-2013. Mixed-effects negative binomial regression estimated changes in radiographic damage over 5 years, including erosions and JSN, separately.

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Introduction: Objective methods like accelerometers are feasible for large studies and may quantify variability in day-to-day physical activity better than self-report. The variability between days suggests that day of the week cannot be ignored in the design and analysis of physical activity studies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimal number of days needed to obtain reliable estimates of weekly habitual physical activity using the wrist-worn GENEActiv accelerometer.

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Objective: To evaluate, firstly, all published data on baseline and annual progression rates of radiographic damage from all longitudinal observational cohorts, and secondly, the association of standard clinical and laboratory parameters with long-term radiographic joint damage.

Methods: A comprehensive search of the literature from 1975 to 2014, using PubMed, SCOPUS and Cochrane databases, identified a total of 28 studies that investigated long-term radiographic progression, and 41 studies investigating predictors of long-term radiographic progression. This was submitted and approved by PROSPERO in February 2014 (Registration Number: CRD42014007589).

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While South Africa has one of the highest hypertension rates globally, there are few data on masked hypertension (MHT) and white-coat hypertension (WCHT). This study measured the frequency of MHT and WCHT in low-income (<$500 US per month) South African adults, evaluating cardiovascular risk by arterial stiffness. Participants (n=101, 50% male; mean age 39.

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Purpose: To determine optimal body mass index (BMI) cut-points for the identification of cardiometabolic risk in black South African adults.

Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study of a weighted sample of healthy black South Africans aged 25-65 years (721 men, 1386 women) from the North West and Free State Provinces. Demographic, lifestyle and anthropometric measures were taken, and blood pressure, fasting serum triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and blood glucose were measured.

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Background: Recently, triaxial raw acceleration accelerometers have become available from GENEActiv and ActiGraph; both are designed for wrist and hip wear. It is important to determine whether the output from these monitors is comparable with the wealth of data already collected from the hip-worn, epoch-based, uniaxial ActiGraph.

Purpose: This study aimed to assess the concurrent validity of measures of total activity and time spent at different activity intensities from the GENEActiv relative to the ActiGraph GT3X+.

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