Intervention to reduce sedentary behavior among desk workers did not lower blood pressure
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Key takeaways:
- A 3-month intervention reduced sedentary behavior and increased standing by about 1 hour during the workday for desk workers.
- The intervention did not, however, reduce BP or arterial stiffness.
A 3-month intervention that decreased sedentary behavior and increased standing during the workday did not reduce BP or arterial stiffness among desk workers with untreated elevated or high BP, according to a study published in Circulation.
“The direct relationship between prolonged sedentary behavior and CVD risk in randomized crossover laboratory studies and observational cohorts has led to the hypothesis that the acute negative CV effects of prolonged sedentary behavior may accumulate, resulting in high BP and eventually CVD,” Bethany Barone Gibbs, PhD, chair and associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at West Virginia School of Public Health, and colleagues wrote. “However, results of sedentary behavior reduction randomized clinical trials are inconclusive because most have not specifically studied individuals with high BP or measured BP comprehensively.”
To determine whether reducing sedentary behavior would decrease BP and pulse wave velocity, Barone Gibbs and colleagues conducted the RESET-BP study, a parallel-arm, randomized clinical trial of 271 desk workers aged 21 to 65 years (mean age, 45 years) with systolic BP of 120 mm Hg to 159 mm Hg or diastolic BP of 80 mm Hg to 99 mm Hg (mean, 129/83 mm Hg) who were off antihypertensive medications. All participants also reported fewer than 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
Researchers randomly assigned participants in a 1:1 ratio to a 3-month multicomponent sedentary behavior reduction intervention (n = 136) or a no-contact control group (n = 135).
The intervention targeted reducing sedentary behavior by replacing it with standing and other light-intensity physical activity such as walking and resistance exercises.
The researchers instructed patients to wear an accelerometer to assess sedentary behavior and physical activity at baseline and 3 months.
The primary outcome of the study was clinic-based resting systolic BP; secondary outcomes included diastolic BP, 24-hour ambulatory BP and pulse wave velocity.
The researchers found that participants in the intervention group had reduced sedentary behavior (–1.15 hours per day; P < .0001), increased all-day standing (0.94 hours per day; P < .0001) and increased stepping (5.4 minutes per day; P < .05) compared with the control group.
Although resting systolic BP decreased in both groups, the researchers observed no significant difference in 3-month changes between groups (–0.22 mm Hg). They also noted that between-group changes in resting diastolic BP (0.13 mm Hg) and ambulatory BP, as well as intervention effects on pulse wave velocity, were similar.
Among all participants, reductions in sedentary behavior during work time were associated with decreases in diastolic BP (r = 0.15; P = .0165) and increases in carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (r = –0.19; P = .0059), according to the researchers.
Additionally, although increases in standing during work time were associated with increases in carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (r = 0.17; P = .0111), increases in standing during nonwork time were associated with decreases in carotid-femoral wave velocity (r = –0.14; P = .0379).
“Taken together, our findings indicate that reducing sedentary behavior by [approximately] 1 hour each day and primarily through standing during work is not an effective nonpharmacologic strategy for reducing BP and improving arterial stiffness,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers acknowledged several study limitations, including external validity concerns related to participant characteristics.
“Further research is needed in different populations (eg, older age, higher BP, lower activity levels) and to test the CV effects of greater reductions in sedentary behavior and replacing sedentary behavior with behaviors other than work time standing at a sit-stand desk,” the researchers wrote.
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