Tackling Disruptions to Frailty Interventions: Developing Personalized Interventions Targeted for Older Persons With Cardiac Frailty

Overview

Background: Muscle mass loss and metabolic dysfunction, exacerbated by inactivity and nutritional inadequacies, underpin both cardiovascular disease and frailty in ageing. The investigators' proposal seeks to develop interventions in exercise and diet that are targeted for older adults with cardiac frailty. Methods: The investigators' proposal is a five-year study comprising of first phase (first 2-2.5 years) and second phase (next 2-2.5 years). In the first phase cardiac frail participants (up to N=500) from each healthcare transition (inpatient hospital, step-down community hospital, outpatient clinic/community) will be randomized to receive Intervention Sets or usual care. The second phase will scale up these programs. Three Intervention Sets A, B, and C will be implemented in the outpatient, step-down community hospital, and acute hospital settings. Diet intervention comprises meal sets prepared with nutrients involved in energy metabolism. Exercise training is facilitated by hospital gyms and hospital physiotherapists. Diet and exercise behavior will be monitored using questionnaires, video conferencing and meal photos. Significance: Clinical studies are urgently needed using consistent frailty tools to evaluate the efficacy and promise of frailty interventions, targeted to achieve reversal/retardation of frailty. When scaled up, these approaches will provide high-quality science needed to manage cardiac frailty towards healthier population ageing.

Detailed description

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular disease is a formidable disruptor of interventions related to exercise intervention. Patients and physicians face uncertainty about dispensing safe and effective exercise programs to frail patients with concomitant cardiovascular disease. This hesitancy permeates across transitions from acute to step-down care to community settings. Uncertainties include fear of exacerbating heart conditions, individual variability in exercise response and what exercise targets to reach that is rational for each patient. Often, little or no exercise intervention is applied in the acute to step-down phases, which are the periods most critical for frailty reversal. Current dietary interventions do not address the special nutritional needs of acute cardiovascular conditions like heart failure, and may paradoxically induce a syndrome of cardiac cachexia that contributes to the downward spiral of frailty.

STUDY DESIGN:

This will be a prospective randomized clinical trial.

The investigators' proposal is a five-year study comprising of first phase (first 2-2.5 years) and second phase (next 2-2.5 years). In the first phase cardiac frail participants (up to N=500) from each healthcare transition (inpatient hospital, step-down community hospital, outpatient clinic/community) will be randomized to receive Intervention Sets or usual care. The second phase will scale up these programs. At enrolment, pre-defined study time points and end of study, participants will undergo assessments of clinical status, frailty status, cardiovascular function, nutrition, quality of life (QOL), diet/exercise behaviour, and biospecimen sampling. Three Intervention Sets will be implemented in the outpatient, step-down community hospital, and acute hospital settings. Diet intervention comprises meal sets prepared with nutrients involved in energy metabolism. During the trial, exercise intervention is performed in hospitals and community hospitals by physiotherapists. Associated factors such as dietary, comorbidities and other related habits will be tracked simultaneously during the trial

Intervention Set A: exercise sessions and meals over approximately 12 weeks. Intervention Set B : exercise sessions and meals over approximately 3 weeks. Intervention Set C: meals over approximately 3 weeks.

PROCEDURES

1. Baseline Procedures i. Cardiovascular measurements

* Non-invasive brachial blood pressure machine * Echocardiography * Electrocardiography ii. Biospecimen collection iii. Six-minute walk test iv. Musculoskeletal Analysis v. Cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET)/ Treadmill vi. Questionnaires vii. Timed up and go (TUG) test 2. Post-intervention procedures i. Cardiovascular measurements

* Non-invasive brachial blood pressure machine * Echocardiography * Electrocardiography ii. Biospecimen collection iii. Six-minute walk test iv. Musculoskeletal Analysis v. Questionnaires vi. Timed up and go (TUG) test 3. Closing questionnaires

Interventions

• Other Intervention Set A
  exercise sessions and meals over approximately 12 weeks
• Other Intervention Set B
  exercise sessions and meals over approximately 3 weeks
• Other Intervention Set C
  meals over approximately 3 weeks

Primary outcome measures

• Improvement in cardiovascular markers [Time frame: at 14 weeks from baseline]
• Improvement in skeletal muscle [Time frame: at 14 weeks from baseline]
• Improvement in Fried Frailty Phenotype Score (improvement in any domain) (i.e., reduction in score) [Time frame: at six months from baseline]

Secondary outcome measures (2)

• Improvement in metabolite level [Time frame: Three months and six months from baseline]
• Improvement in Quality of life (QOL): EuroQOL-5D-5L (higher score) [Time frame: Three months and six months from baseline]

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion criteria

• Age ≥ 21 years old
• Outdoor ambulant

Exclusion criteria

• Bed-bound
• Dementia (Stage 6 onwards)
• Residing in sheltered or nursing home
• Cancer (to avoid confounding with cardiac disease sequelae from cancer)
• Participation in ongoing clinical trials that involve interventional drugs or devices
• Uncontrolled hypertension (systolic blood pressure ≥160mmHg and/or diastolic blood pressure ≥90mmHg) despite being on treatment for hypertension
• Low blood pressure (systolic blood pressure <90mmHg or diastolic blood pressure <40mmHg)
• Uncontrolled atrial fibrillation (controlled atrial fibrillation is allowed)
• Ventricular arrhythmias (such as ventricular tachycardia)
• Renal failure on dialysis
• Chronic kidney disease Stage 4 and above
• Nephrotic syndrome
• Liver cirrhosis Child's B and above
• Inflammatory Bowel Disease
• Severe uncontrolled gout
• Poorly controlled Diabetes Hba1c ≥9%
• On warfarin
• Presence of food allergies (such as shell-fish, prawn)
• Patient's life expectancy is expected to be less than one year at the time of potential enrolment as assessed by the investigator
• Nasogastric or parenteral nutrition
• Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
• Cardiac amyloidosis
• Cardiac sarcoidosis

Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.

Healthy volunteers: No

Study design

Allocation

Randomized

Model

Parallel assignment

Masking

Open label

Primary purpose

Treatment

Study locations

Singapore · 6 centers

• Alexandra Hospital — Singapore
• National Heart Centre Singapore — Singapore
• Changi General Hospital — Singapore
• Sengkang General Hospital — Singapore
• Jurong Community Hospital — Singapore
• NHG Polyclinics — Singapore

Publications

• Koh AS, Gao F, Leng S, Kovalik JP, Zhao X, Tan RS, Fridianto KT, Ching J, Chua SJ, Yuan JM, Koh WP, Zhong L. Dissecting Clinical and Metabolomics Associations of Left Atrial Phasic Function by Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Feature Tracking. Sci Rep. 2018 May 25;8(1):8138. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-26456-8. PMID 29802321
• Koh AS, Gao F, Liu J, Fridianto KT, Ching J, Tan RS, Wong JI, Chua SJ, Leng S, Zhong L, Keng BM, Huang FQ, Yuan JM, Koh WP, Kovalik JP. Metabolomic profile of arterial stiffness in aged adults. Diab Vasc Dis Res. 2018 Jan;15(1):74-80. doi: 10.1177/1479164117733627. Epub 2017 Oct 4. PMID 28976207
• Keng BMH, Gao F, Teo LLY, Lim WS, Tan RS, Ruan W, Ewe SH, Koh WP, Koh AS. Associations between Skeletal Muscle and Myocardium in Aging: A Syndrome of "Cardio-Sarcopenia"? J Am Geriatr Soc. 2019 Dec;67(12):2568-2573. doi: 10.1111/jgs.16132. Epub 2019 Aug 16. PMID 31418823
• Koh AS, Gao F, Tan RS, Zhong L, Leng S, Zhao X, Fridianto KT, Ching J, Lee SY, Keng BMH, Yeo TJ, Tan SY, Tan HC, Lim CT, Koh WP, Kovalik JP. Metabolomic correlates of aerobic capacity among elderly adults. Clin Cardiol. 2018 Oct;41(10):1300-1307. doi: 10.1002/clc.23016. PMID 30350416

Identifiers

NCT: NCT05946174 · 2023/2086

Primary sources (government registries)

• ClinicalTrials.gov (US NIH)

View this study on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗