Effect of Exercise Training for the Chronic Hemodialysis Patients

The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of exercise training on the glucose level in hemodialysis (HD) patients. Sixteen HD patients aged 60.8±9.5 years old participated in this study. They were asked to engage in 30 minutes of exercise training three times a week on the non-hemodialysis days for three months. Both the physical fitness and the serum creatinine levels increased significantly after the exercise training in comparison to the levels at baseline. The degree of the change in the blood glucose level was negatively associated with the degree of change in the serum BDNF level (r=-0.59, p<0.05). The results of the present study suggest that home-based exercise training may improve the physical fitness as well as increasing the muscle mass in HD patients. However, further studies are needed to explain the role of BDNF, which was suggested to play a role in glucose metabolism in our study.