A texting intervention with a group of patients at risk for heart disease led to significant increases in physical activity levels, according to a study published by the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Each of 48 smartphone users aged 18 to 69, also at risk for heart disease, were enrolled in a five-week study at an ambulatory cardiology center in Baltimore. They were divided into three groups: a blinded group that could not interface with their physical activity data or receive text messages; an unblinded group that could interface with physical activity data but did not receive texts; and an unblinded group that could interface with the data and also received texts.

Participants across all three groups set a goal of walking 10,000 steps per day, using the fitness trackers distributed as part of the study. Led by lead author Seth S. Martin, MD, MHS, of the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, researchers created a system that automatically sent personalized texts to the participants in the unblinded text-receiving group to provide encouraging messages or praise based on their level of physical activity as indicated by the real-time tracking information from their fitness trackers. These participants received texts three times a day.

The findings show an automated tracking-texting intervention increased physical activity, with those in the unblinded text-receiving group walking an average of 2,334 more steps per day. The groups that did not receive text messages maintained baseline time spent engaging in physical activity, but the group that received texts increased its total activity time by 21 minutes per day (23 percent increase) and aerobic time by 13 minutes per day (160 percent increase).

At the end of the five-week study, nearly twice as many participants in the text-receiving group achieved the 10,000 steps per day goal compared with the other groups. The mActive trial "lends support to the notion of new mHealth devices as facilitators, not drivers, of behavior change," the authors wrote, because the ability to interface with physical activity data alone did not yield improvement without the text message intervention.