People with chronic kidney disease can dramatically extend their life expectancy just by getting off the couch and exercising, researchers have discovered.

A study team from the University of Utah found that 28 per cent of people with kidney disease lead very inactive lives, more than twice as many as in the healthy population. Most kidney disease sufferers die before the condition becomes end-stage renal disease, which suggests they are dying from something else.

Regular exercise seems to be the key, and their life expectancy could increase by 56 per cent just by moving around more, the researchers found. They had monitored the health and life expectancy of 906 kidney disease sufferers, and compared them with around 14,000 healthy controls.

(Source: Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 2009; November; published ahead of print).