Effects of Vibration-Assisted Physical Activity in Type-2 Diabetes

The World Health Organization ranks Saudi Arabia as having the 7th highest rate of type-2 diabetes in the world. This therefore makes diabetes the most challenging health problem facing Saudi Arabia. Importantly, physical activity has been shown to improve disease symptoms and overall health in patients with type-2 diabetes. However, findings relating to the prevalence of physical inactivity in the Saudi population confirm that a sedentary lifestyle is on the rise, within physical inactivity levels in adults being 80.5%. Therefore, interventions aimed at reducing physical inactivity using bespoke modalities pertinent to Saudi Arabia are clearly warranted.

There have been no fully powered, placebo-controlled trials of localised wearable calf vibration in T2DM within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The proposed study will address this gap by evaluating a 12 week, home based, seated calf vibration intervention in Saudi adults with T2DM, recruited from the Jazan Diabetes and Endocrinology Center. A three-arm design will compare active localised vibration, a sham vibration condition and usual care.