The Leicester Kidney Lifestyle Team Highlights of 2022

2022 was a great year for our team! Some highlights include:

courtney lightfoot and her poster presenting the SMILE-K pilot findings of our online self-management program at the asn kidney week (Image credit: @courtneyjlight)

Naeema patel presenting her talk about patient activation and coping during the COVID-19 pandemic at uk kidney week (Image credit: @tomwilks444)

• We published 32 journal articles, a selection of these can be viewed on PubMed

• We presented 21 research abstracts at 6 national and international conferences including the American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week Conference in Orlando Florida, the European Renal Association Congress in Paris and the UK Kidney Association UK Kidney Week.

• We gave 26 invited lectures and seminars at local, national and international events including: 

  • Tom Wilkinson was an invited speaker at the American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week Conference 2022 in Orlando, FL. His talk was entitled: ‘Exercise to Improve Outcomes in CKD: Evidence for Benefit?’

  • Rosey Billany who was invited to deliver a workshop and act as session chair and speaker at the Transplantoux Symposium 2022 in Leiden, Belguim. The workshop was on ‘Physical Activity Type and Intensity: what should we aim for?

  • Matt Graham-Brown was invited to speak at the Kidney Research RUK Research Showcase at the Royal College of Physicians in London. His presentation was entitled: ‘Cardiovascular Disease and Exercise: A model to understand disease mechanisms and improve patient care.’

  • Noemi Vadaszy ran a Global Renal Exercise (GREX) Young Webinar for World Kidney Day entitled: ‘The validity of the SF-12 to measure physical function in people with non-dialysis CKD

Visiting the eiffel tower in paris at the era conference (IMAGE CREDIT: Alice smith)

KIDNEY RESEARCH LIFESTYLE TEAM AND INTERNATIONAL GREX COLLEAGUES AT THE ERA CONFERENCE IN PARIS (IMAGE CREDIT: @EURORECKD)

• We published the first NICE-endorsed Clinical Practice Guidelines for Exercise and Lifestyle in Kidney Disease :  9 of the consortium of 17 guideline authors are based in Leicester and associated with our team

• With our colleagues from Respiratory Medicine and Cardiovascular Sciences, we established the University of Leicester Muscle Health Development Centre

• We contributed to the University of Leicester’s fantastic Research Excellence Framework rankings in Sport and Exercise (UoA24) and Clinical Medicine (UoA1)

• We are proud to be part of the Leicester NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, which was awarded £26million in new funding in 2022

• Our SMILE-K multicentre randomised controlled trial completed recruitment at 26 hospital sites across England at the end of 2022. The preliminary results will be available in June 2023. Read about the SMILE-K study on our website here. The SMILE-K protocol is published here

We look forward to what more we can achieve in 2023! View our current studies here, and follow us on twitter to keep up to date with our work.