This was the first study to evaluate the impact of exercise on objective sleep outcomes in persons with Parkinson’s disease.A study conducted by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, along with colleagues at the University of Virginia, has been named the best research article published in the scholarly journal Movement Disorders in 2019-20.
The article, “Randomized, Controlled Trial of Exercise on Objective and Subjective
Sleep in Parkinson’s Disease,” was published online Feb. 24, 2020. The associate editors and editorial board of the journal select two articles — one original research and one review — as the top published papers from July through June each year. First author of the UAB study was Amy Amara, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Neurology. Senior author was Marcas Bamman, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrated Biology and founding director of the UAB Center for Exercise Medicine in the School of Medicine.
“Previous studies have shown that exercise improves motor symptoms and subjective sleep quality in Parkinson’s disease, but there are no published studies evaluating the impact of exercise on objective sleep outcomes,” Amara said. “The goal of this study was to determine if high-intensity exercise rehabilitation combining resistance training and body-weight interval training, compared with a sleep hygiene control, improved objective sleep outcomes in PD.”
The study randomized patients 45 years of age and older with mild to moderate Parkinson’s disease into an exercise group or a no-exercise sleep hygiene group. The exercise group engaged in high-intensity supervised exercise three times per week for 16 weeks. The non-exercise group received telephone and in-person consultation on sleep issues.
The paper concluded that high-intensity exercise improves objective sleep outcomes, as measured by sleep studies, in Parkinson’s disease.
Amy Amara, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Neurology.“Exercise is an effective non-pharmacological intervention to improve this disabling symptom in Parkinson’s,” Amara said.
Other authors from UAB are Kimberly Wood, Ph.D., Allen Joop, M.S., Raima Memon, M.D., Jennifer Pilkington, S. Craig Tuggle, John Reams, Christopher Hurt, Ph.D., and Gary Cutter, Ph.D. Co-authors from the University of Virginia are Matthew Barrett, M.D., David Edwards, Ph.D., and Arthur Weltman, Ph.D.
Movement Disorders is the official journal of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.
This study was funded by the NIH (K23NS080912, T32 HD071866), Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, the Manning Foundation, the Curry Foundation at the University of Virginia, UAB Center for Exercise Medicine, and the NIH National Rehabilitation Research Resource to Enhance Clinical Trials (REACT, P2CHD086851).