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.