Remote Physical Activity Monitoring in Individuals With Metabolic Syndrome

The Development and Application of a Toolset for Monitoring Personalized Physical Activity and Evaluation of Its Effectiveness in Individuals With Metabolic Syndrome

A prospective intervention study to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed toolset for remote physical activity monitoring to improve arterial stiffness and other cardiometabolic parameters and to increase physical activity levels and the compliance to the prescribed exercise in individuals with metabolic syndrome.

At first, all subjects of the prospective study participated in the 2-month outpatient aerobic exercise program, which consisted of 40 aerobic training sessions on a cycle ergometer 5 times/week for 40 min. During all training sessions, heart rate was maintained at the targeted level, which was obtained individually by cardiopulmonary test. After 2 months, during individual motivational consultations, all participants received recommendations for home-based training and were randomly allocated to the intervention or the control group. Then only the intervention group subjects participated in the 6-month home-based aerobic exercise program using a wearable heart rate monitor, which was connected to the smartphone via Bluetooth. The intervention group subjects used a smartphone application created for the study. The control group participants were asked to exercise at home for 6 months without wearables and smartphone application. The evaluation of the study participants was performed at baseline (1st visit), after 2 months (2nd visit) and after 8 months (3rd visit).

Inclusion Criteria:

• Males (40-55 years) and females (50-65 years) with metabolic syndrome, having at least three of the following five criteria: hypertriglyceridemia (triglycerides ≥ 1.7 mmol/l); high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ≤ 1.03 mmol/l for men or ≤ 1.29 mmol/l for women; abdominal obesity (waist circumference > 102 cm for men and > 88 cm for women); elevated blood pressure (systolic blood pressure ≥ 130 mmHg and/or diastolic blood pressure ≥ 85 mmHg or current use of antihypertensive drugs); elevated fasting plasma glucose ≥ 5.6 mmol/l;

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients with overt cardiovascular disease (previous myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass surgery, percutaneous coronary intervention, previous stroke)
• Patients with severe heart failure symptoms, uncontrolled hypertension
• Patients with urinary tract infection or fever for another unknown reason
• Patients who have actively exercised in the last 24 hours
• Pregnant women