In the present study, 9.9% participants were given physician’s direction of exercise restrictions. The logistic regression analysis showed that younger age, CVD, CHF and lower eGFR are related to prescribing exercise restrictions. On the contrary, sex, cause of CKD (diabetic or not), stroke, BMI, systolic blood pressure and albuminuria were not related with it.
The present study showed the variations between institutions in terms of physician’s directions about exercise restriction. As mentioned in the introduction, many studies [5,6,7] reported that prescribing exercise for patients with CKD has good effects on the change in eGFR and proteinuria, exercise capacity and mortality. In a Japanese guideline, the recommendation for exercise was not clearly stated, but it recommended that physicians should make plans about exercise, considering the activity, exercise capacity and risk of CVD.
We noted that the younger the participants, the more they were inclined to be given physician’s direction of exercise restrictions. As younger participants might exercise more than older ones, physicians might be imposing exercise restrictions for younger patients with CKD [12, 13]. History of CVD or CHF was associated with physician’s direction of exercise restrictions. The American College of Cardiology Foundation/American Heart Association (AHA) recommended that exercise training (or regular physical activity) is recommended as safe and effective for patients with heart failure who can participate in the improvement of functional status [14]. Thus, those physicians’ direction of exercise restrictions could be inappropriate. The lower the eGFR, the more the patients were given physician’s direction of exercise restrictions. According to Robinson-Cohen et al. [15], there was little difference in the degree of eGFR change in the sub-analysis based on CKD stages, regardless of the amount of physical activities.
Diabetic nephropathy as cause of CKD was not associated with physician’s direction of exercise restriction in this study. We predicted the opposite results, that is, diabetic nephropathy was associated with physician’s direction of exercise restrictions because diabetic neuropathy was expected in patients with diabetic nephropathy [16]. The present study showed marginal results. The almost similar ORs and 95% CIs obtained from logistic regression analyses of variables that were and were not stratified by facilities could have resulted from a lack of sample. Moderate to severe stroke generally causes disability, and the AHA/American Stroke Association recommended physical exercise to reduce stroke factors [17]. In the present study, the history of stroke was not associated with physician’s direction of exercise restrictions. As in the recommendation, exercise should be actively recommended for patients with stroke; however, there is a possibility that physician’s direction of exercise restrictions was not prescribed in patients with decreased activities of daily living due to the presence of disability. As some authors recommend, patients with uncontrolled high blood pressure should avoid exercising [18]. In the present study, there were few patients with uncontrolled hypertension; thus, we could not show any relationship between uncontrolled hypertension and physician’s direction of exercise restrictions. There was also no relationship between systolic blood pressure as continuous variable and physician’s direction of exercise restrictions or between BMI and physician’s direction of exercise restrictions. A pilot trial in patients with obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus and CKD showed little difference in proteinuria and eGFR [6]. However, there was some evidence that weight loss intervention in CKD is associated with decreasing proteinuria with no further decrease in GFR [19, 20]. Exercise along with weight loss might be beneficial for obese patients with CKD.
Our findings showed that albuminuria was not associated with physician’s direction of exercise restrictions, despite a report that exercise can increase proteinuria with abnormal glomerular permeability [2]. Nephrologists are concerned that it might accelerate the progression of renal dysfunction [3], but recent studies showed that physical activities are not associated with progression of renal disease [5,6,7]. However, in facilities that prescribed the more exercise restrictions, patients were likely to have more albuminuria (Table 3). There was no association between albuminuria and restriction of exercise in the analysis for each individual; however, there was a relationship between albuminuria and the frequency of the directions of exercise restrictions by facilities. These results might suggest that the practice pattern or the attitude towards exercise for patients with CKD of each facility affect physician’s direction of exercise restriction, that is, as mentioned in the introduction, nephrologists used to consider proteinuria through increasing glomerular permeability from exercise as the cause of CKD progression [3]. However, many recent clinical studies revealed opposite results [5,6,7]. The variation in practice pattern might be caused by the facility’s policy based on the old concept, and we might just look at the transition time of the practice pattern of exercise therapy for the patients with CKD or the evidence–practice gap [21]. In facilities that prescribed more exercise restrictions, patients were likely to have higher total cholesterol; however, the difference in the absolute value of total cholesterol between the 1st tertile and the 3rd tertile was not clinically significant.
This study has several strengths. First, the CKD-JAC study has enrolled a cohort of individuals with CKD who were examined by nephrologists; thus, major Japanese facilities took part in this cohort. Second, this study was one of the very few studies that examined the practice pattern of physician’s direction of exercise restrictions for patients with CKD. As stated earlier, some of the findings of this study suggested the presence of evidence–practice gap; thus, we expect that this study would help improve the quality of care and lead to more studies on exercises for patients with CKD.
However, several limitations should also be mentioned. First, the population in this study was limited to Japanese patients, hampering generalisability to a global population. Second, the variable of physician’s direction of exercise restrictions by physicians was binary, with patients reporting the variable in the questionnaire, which can possibly lead to incorrect estimation of prevalence of physician’s direction of exercise restrictions, and the details of the exercise restrictions, such as intensity, length and frequency, were unclear. We recommended that studies with detailed information about these exercise restrictions be performed in the future. Third, we considered that not only the patient characteristics but also the facility characteristics affected the practice pattern. For example, the availability of consultation for rehabilitation medicine or cardiology services can influence the proportion of exercise restriction. All 17 facilities have a department of rehabilitation medicine and a cardiology department. Therefore, our results could have only limited application for a general hospital. Fourth, some data, such as eGFR, were missing. Our analysis did not include 5.9% of patients whose eGFR was unknown. The variable of eGFR for inclusion criteria was measured in each facility. Otherwise, the variable of eGFR used in the baseline data was measured at the central laboratory. This is why the eGFR level was one of the inclusion criteria of eGFR but there were some patients without eGFR at baseline. These missing data could have some impact on the results. Finally, because the status of diabetes mellitus, CVD and CHF was unclear, we could not examine the influence of diabetic retinopathy, diabetic neuropathy and instability of CVD and CHF on exercise restrictions.