posted on 2015-10-28, 11:45authored byJoshua A. Bell, Mark Hamer, G. David Batty, Severine Sabia, Archana Singh-Manoux, Mika Kivimaki
Aims/hypothesis
Our study aimed to investigate the combined effects of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and leisure time sitting on the long-term risk of obesity and clustering of metabolic risk factors.
Methods
The duration of moderate and vigorous physical activity and of leisure time sitting was assessed by questionnaire between 1997 and 1999 among 3,670 participants from the Whitehall II cohort study (73% male; mean age 56 years). Multivariable-adjusted logistic regression models examined associations of physical activity and leisure time sitting tertiles with odds of incident obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) and incident metabolic risk factor clustering (two or more of the following: low HDL-cholesterol, high triacylglycerol, hypertension, hyperglycaemia, insulin resistance) at 5 and 10 year follow-ups.
Results
Physical activity, but not leisure time sitting, was associated with incident obesity. The lowest odds of incident obesity after 5 years were observed for individuals reporting both high physical activity and low leisure time sitting (OR = 0.26; 95% CI 0.11, 0.64), with weaker effects after 10 years. Compared with individuals in the low physical activity/high leisure time sitting group, those with intermediate levels of both physical activity and leisure time sitting had lower odds of incident metabolic risk factor clustering after 5 years (OR 0.53; 95% CI 0.36, 0.78), with similar odds after 10 years.
Conclusions/interpretation
Both high levels of physical activity and low levels of leisure time sitting may be required to substantially reduce the risk of obesity. Associations with developing metabolic risk factor clustering were less clear.
Funding
JAB is supported by an Economic and Social Research
Council studentship. MH is supported by the British Heart Foundation
(RE/10/005/28296). AS-M receives research support from the US
National Institutes of Health (R01AG013196, R01AG034454). SS is
supported by the National Institute on Aging. MK is supported by the
Medical Research Council (K013351); the National Heart, Lung, and
Blood Institute (R01HL36310); the National Institute of Aging
(R01AG034454); the Academy of Finland; and an ESRC professorial
fellowship.
History
School
Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Diabetologia
Citation
BELL, J.A. ... et al., 2014. Combined effect of physical activity and leisure time sitting on long-term risk of incident obesity and metabolic risk factor clustering. Diabetologia, 57 (10), pp. 2048-2056.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/
Publication date
2014
Notes
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the
source are credited.