Association Between Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease Risk Markets and Physical Activity Status in Adolescents

Abstract Introduction: Some of the chronic diseases that appear in adulthood are developed in childhood stage. There are few studies investigating the association between physical activity (PA) and cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk markets using objective measurement for apparently healthy adolescents.

Aim: The primary aim of the study was to investigate some of the important cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk markers in relation to PA status in apparently healthy lean adolescents.

Methods: A 20 adolescents (12-17yr) (male n=12 and female n=8) attended the laboratory on two occasions. On the first session body mass, height, BMI, body fat and resting heart rate and blood pressure were recorded. Free living activity intensity was monitored using ActiGraph accelerometer (AG) for two periods of 6 consecutive days. Participants were instructed to wear AG for at least 10 hours of waking time per day. Based on the PA status, adolescents were grouped into normally active (NA) group (MVPA>300min.w-1) and low active (LA) group (MVPA<150min.w-1). Fasting blood samples (>10hrs) were obtained from participants early morning for analysis of cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk markers.

Results: Physical activity status of the participants showed that NA group spend more time in moderate, moderate to vigorous (P<0.001) and vigor. & very vigorous intensity(P<0.05). In addition, LA group have higher body fat percentage significantly (P<0.01). On the other hand, NA group recorded a significantly higher predicted VO2max than LA group (P<0.05). Although cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk markers were not significantly different between groups in most examined blood marker except for fasting glucose (P<0.05), there was a strong association between active time, MVPA, and vigorous and very vigorous time with glucose, insulin and HOMA-IR (r(CI)=-0.48), P=0.03) which indicates the potential for signs of progression to metabolic disease.

Conclusion: Low physical activity status (MVPA<150min.w-1) could be a sign of higher fasting insulin and HOMA-IR that could progress if physical activity is not increased to meet the recommended physical activity guidelines for adolescents. Therefore, policy makers should give a priority to enhance adolescents to achieve physical activity recommended guidelines.