Exercise may reduce heart disease risk in liver transplant recipients

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Heart Disease Weekly -- New research reveals that metabolic syndrome-risk factors that can lead to heart disease and/or stroke-is common in liver transplant recipients, with rates highest at one year following the procedure. Findings published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, indicate that exercise could reduce complications from metabolic disease in patients post-transplantation.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute suggests that obesity, physical inactivity, and insulin resistance increase risk of metabolic syndrome. According to the NHLBI, patients who have three or more of the following metabolic clinical features would be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome:

• high triglyceride level

• abdominal obesity