Grant: Team Grant: Chronic Disease Risk and Intervention Strategies

Annually, over 1000 Canadians sustain a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) and unwittingly join more than 41,000 Canadians living with this chronic and debilitating injury. The estimated annual costs of care in Canada exceed $1.5 billion. Recent data reveal that people with SCI are developing chronic diseases at younger ages and at greater rates than the able-bodied population. This alarming trend appears to be caused by inactivity-related illnesses, particularly cardiovascular(CV)disease, which is the main cause of death and disease in people with SCI. Exercise training has the potential to improve strength, performance, and well-being among people with SCI. However, we have little information on the CV effects of training in people with SCI. People with SCI respond differently to exercise. There are also important differences in CV disease between men and women: we do not yet know if this is true for people with SCI, or if men and women with SCI will need to approach exercise differently to improve CV health. This is information that we urgently need to develop exercise programs that will be effective in improving CV health for Canadians living with SCI. The goal of this proposal is to improve CV health for people with chronic SCI through optimized exercise and targeted education. This project gathers a diverse team of 13 prestigious scientists working at 6 Canadian universities. We will use both animal models of SCI and training in people with SCI to examine the effects of exercise on CV risk. We will also determine whether educating health care providers on specific CV problems associated with SCI will help to reduce the financial burden of care, and improve treatment, of people with SCI. By providing important information on exercise training, and targeted education to clinicians, this project will reduce chronic disease and improve CV health for Canadians living with chronic SCI.