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Moderate to vigorous physical activity improved cardiometabolic risk factors in children regardless of time spent sedentary
Ekelund U. JAMA. 2012;307:704-712.
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Children and teens who spend more time participating in moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity appear to have better cardiometabolic risk factors, including measures of cholesterol, BP and waist circumference, regardless of the amount of time spent sedentary, according to results of a new study.
Researchers examined associations between physical activity and time spent sedentary with established cardiometabolic risk factors in children and adolescents. For the study, researchers pooled data from the International Children’s Accelerometry Database from 14 studies conducted between 1998 and 2009 that comprised more than 20,000 children.
About 75% of the children were categorized as normal weight, 17.7% as overweight and 7.4% as obese. Researchers monitored the children’s physical activity for an average of 5.2 days and then stratified all participants by tertiles of physical activity and sedentary time. On average, children spent 30 minutes per day participating in moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity and 354 minutes per day sedentary. Boys were more active than girls, and they spent about 55% more average daytime in moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity, whereas girls spent about 5% more of the day sedentary. Children in the top tertile of physical activity accumulated more than 35 minutes per day in this intensity level vs. fewer than 18 minutes per day for children in the low tertile.
“Higher levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity were associated with significantly lower values of waist circumference, systolic BP, fasting insulin and fasting triglycerides, and higher values of HDL across tertiles for sedentary time. The differences in outcomes between higher and lower moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity were greater the lower sedentary time,” Ulf Ekelund, PhD, of the Institute of Metabolic Science, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and colleagues wrote in the study.
Differences in waist circumference between the bottom and top tertiles of physical activity were 5.6 cm for high sedentary time and 3.6 cm for low sedentary time. Mean differences in systolic BP for high and low sedentary time were 0.7 mm Hg and 2.5 mm Hg; for HDL, differences were –2.6 mg/dL and –4.5 mg/dL, respectively. Mean differences for insulin and triglycerides were similar.
“Belonging to the top tertile for moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity is associated with favorable metabolic health regardless of the amount of time spent sedentary. In contrast, time spent sedentary is unrelated to these risk factors after adjusting for time spent in moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity,” the researchers wrote. They said moving from the bottom to the top tertile for moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity requires an increase in daily activity of at least 20 minutes.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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