Abstract
Background: Walking, as the most common campaign in older people, is recommended to improve their cardiovascular health. However, the direct association between weekly walking activity and asymptomatic hypertensive mediated organ damage (HMOD) remains unclear.Methods: 2,830 community-dwelling elderly subjects (over 65 years) in northern Shanghai were recruited from 2014 to 2018. Weekly walking activity was assessed by International Physical Activity Questionnaires (IPAQ). Within the framework of comprehensive cardiovascular examinations, HMOD, including left ventricular mass index, peak transmitral pulsed Doppler velocity/early diastolic tissue Doppler velocity, creatinine clearance rate, urinary albumin–creatinine ratio, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV), carotid intima–media thickness (CIMT), arterial plaque, and ankle-brachial index (ABI), were all evaluated.Results: 1,862 (65.8%) participants with weekly walking activity showed lower CIMT, lower cf-PWV, fewer abnormal ABI, and lower prevalence of hypertension and coronary heart disease (p < 0.05). Walking activity was negatively correlated with age and smokers (correlation coefficient: −0.066, −0.042; both p < 0.05). After adjusting for cardiovascular risk factors and concomitant diseases, walking activity was significantly associated with better indicator of most vascular HMOD in multivariate logistic regressions, including arterial stiffness [odds ratio (OR) = 0.75, p = 0.01], increased CIMT (OR = 0.70, p = 0.03), and peripheral artery disease (OR = 0.72, p = 0.005), but not cardiac or renal HMOD. Subgroup analysis further showed that walking duration ≥1 h/day was significantly associated with decreased risk of most vascular HMOD after adjustment for confounders and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity based on IPAQ (all p < 0.05).Conclusions: In the community-dwelling elderly Chinese, there was a significant negative association of weekly walking activity with vascular HMOD, but not cardiac or renal HMOD. Increased daily walking duration, but not walking frequency, was significantly associated with improved vascular HMOD. Hence, increasing daily walking duration seems to encourage a healthy lifestyle in terms of vascular protection.Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier: NCT02368938.
Highlights
Epidemiological studies in China showed a rapidly increasing prevalence of hypertension from 18.0% in 2002 to 27.8% in 2014 [1]
Considering asymptomatic hypertensive mediated organ damage (HMOD) in the elderly as critical prodromes of CV events and mortality, we investigated the association of weekly walking activity with asymptomatic HMOD based on self-reported walking participation within the framework of CV risk assessment in a communitydwelling elderly
To investigate the relationship between different levels of physical activity and vascular HMOD, we conducted multivariate logistic regressions after adjustment for confounders, and the results indicated that only the resulting odds ratio (OR) for peripheral artery disease was significantly negatively associated with a moderate-to-vigorous level of physical activity (OR: 0.74, 95% CI: 0.60–0.93, p = 0.009) relative to a low level of physical activity (Table 4)
Summary
Epidemiological studies in China showed a rapidly increasing prevalence of hypertension from 18.0% in 2002 to 27.8% in 2014 [1]. Accumulating evidence demonstrated that physical activity (including low, moderate, and vigorous intensity) could prevent CVD, exhibit multi-system anti-aging effects [3], and extend the life expectancy of the world’s population, partly due to the improvement in cardiovascular (CV) risk factors [4, 5]. Foster et al in the Framingham Heart Study found no association between physical activity with indices of kidney function over an average follow-up of 6.6 years [15]. It is controversial whether weekly walking activity influenced the HMOD. The direct association between weekly walking activity and asymptomatic hypertensive mediated organ damage (HMOD) remains unclear
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