Association between physical activity and cardiovascular risk factors: Dose and sex matter

Abstract

Objective We studied the association between different levels of physical activity (PA) and major cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in adult people, as well as sex-specific differences.

Methods Medical data from a large Spanish cohort of workers (aged 18-64 years) were prospectively obtained during a five-year period. Participants were categorized attending to their self-reported PA levels as inactive (performing neither moderate nor vigorous-intensity PA), or either regularly or insufficiently active (meeting or not, respectively, international recommendations of PA [≥ 150 or ≥ 75 min/week of moderate or vigorous-intensity PA, respectively, or a combination thereof]), and risk of diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, and obesity was assessed.

Results Data from 527,662 participants (32% women) were used for analysis. 63.5, 12.3, and 24.2 % of the participants were inactive, insufficiently active, and regularly active, respectively. A significantly lower likelihood of all CVD risk factors was found in both regularly active (by 42 to 10%) and – although less remarkable – insufficiently active individuals (by 30 to 9%) vs their inactive referents. Although these results were overall corroborated in sex-specific analyses, a PA dose-dependent association was not observed for hypercholesterolemia in men and PA – whether insufficient or regular – conferred no significant protective effect against obesity in women.

Conclusions Our findings suggest that PA reduces the odds of major CVD risk factors in a dose-response manner but there are some sex-specific differences.