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Successful prevention and treatment of hypertension depend on the appropriate combination of antihypertensive drug therapy and nondrug lifestyle modification. While most hypertension guidelines recommend moderate- to high-intensity exercise, we decided to explore a mild yet effective type of exercise to add to hypertension management, especially in populations with complications or frailty. After comparing the short-term cardiovascular effects of low-speed walking versus high-speed walking for 3 kilometers (km) (3 km/h versus 6 km/h) in young, healthy volunteers, we delivered low-speed walking (low-intensity walking, 2.5 metabolic equivalents of task, METs) as exercise therapy in 42 prehypertensive and 43 hypertensive subjects. We found that one session of 3 km low-intensity walking exerted a transient pressure-lowering effect as well as a mild negative chronotropic effect on heart rate in both the prehypertensive and hypertensive subjects; these short-term benefits on blood pressure and heart rate were accompanied by a brief increase in urine β-endorphin output. Then we prescribed regular low-intensity walking with a target exercise dose (exercise volume) of 500–1000 METs·min/week (50–60 min/day and 5–7 times/week) in hypertensive subjects in addition to their daily activities. Regular low-intensity walking also showed mild but significant blood pressure-lowering and heart rate-reducing effects in 7 hypertensive subjects within two months. It is hypothesized that regular low-intensity exercise of the necessary dose could be taken as a pragmatic and supplementary medication for hypertension management.

In our previous article entitled “Low-intensity walking as mild medication for pressure control in prehypertensive and hyperten-sive subjects: how far shall we wander?” published in this journal [1], we reported mild but significant reductions in both blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) after low-intensity walking at a speed of 3 km/h (2.5 metabolic equivalents of task, METs), accompanied by a transient elevation in urine β-endorphin. In a recent study observing environmental influence on low-intensity walking, we found unexpectedly interesting results that we would like to share with the readers of the journal.

The mcr-1 gene was detected in 5.11% (58/1136) of Escherichia coli isolates of chicken origin from 13 provinces in China. A novel mcr-1 variant, named mcr-1.3 , encoding an Ile-to-Val functional variant of MCR-1 was identified in a sequence type 155 (ST155) strain. An mcr-1.3 -containing IncI2 plasmid, pHeN867 (60,757 bp), was identified. The transfer of pHeN867 led to a 32-fold increase in the MIC of colistin in the recipient, exhibiting an effect on colistin resistance that was similar to that of mcr-1 .