23/09/2025
Ottawa, Ontario — Tuesday September 23, 2025
The rare neuromuscular disorder Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) causes kids’ muscles to weaken over time, and with no known cure, clinical management focuses on slowing disease progression and improving quality of life.
Breathing difficulties caused by muscle weakness can have a big impact on the quality of life for kids with DMD, so Sherri Katz led the multi-site STEADFAST study with Anne Tsampalieros, Nick Barrowman, and Hugh McMillan to see if an exercise program that improves respiratory health, called breath stacking, would improve quality of life for kids with DMD. The study followed 62 boys with DMD over two years to measure changes to quality of life when practicing breath stacking twice a day compared to the standard DMD treatment.
“Boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy have lower baseline quality of life scores than kids without the disease and also those with other chronic illness, even in earlier stages when lung function is less affected” says Katz, Senior Scientist at the CHEO Research Institute. “Tracking quality of life scores over time for boys with Duchenne is mostly unexplored, but what we do know suggests that breath stacking could help improve the quality of life for these kids as the disease progresses and they experience more breathing difficulties.”
Although breath stacking is shown to slow respiratory decline, researchers found that it didn’t lead to any quality of life improvements. Despite these findings, this at-home intervention shows promise for kids with more advanced muscle weakness, and future studies will explore the best time to introduce kids to breath stacking to provide the biggest improvement to their quality of life.