Device Measured Physical Activity And Sedentary Behavior In Chilean Older Adults: The Latin American Cities For Healthy Aging Study

Abstract

PURPOSE: To describe device measured physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) in older adults from Temuco, Chile. METHODS: Community-dwelling adults aged 60 and older were recruited from 17 different neighbourhoods in Temuco, Chile. The participants were asked to wear an ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometer on the hip for 7 consecutive days. A sleeping and a non-wear-time algorithms were used to detect daily wearing time. Accelerometer data were considered valid if the participant wore the device for at least 8 hours on any 4 days of the week. Accelerometer vector magnitude counts (cpm) were used to classify all worn time as either SB (<200 cpm), light (LPA, 200-2689 cpm), moderate (MPA, 2690-6166 cpm), vigorous (VPA, 6167-9642 cpm), very vigorous PA (VVPA, ≥9643 cpm) and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA, ≥2690 cpm cpm) using a combination of Aguilar (2014) and Sasaki (2011) cut-points. For those participants who were unable to provide 7 complete days, total time spent in different activity intensities was calculated as: (5 × mean weekday time + 2 × mean weekend day time)/7, thus providing an average day estimate for each behavior. PA recommendation compliance was defined as accumulating either ≥ 150 min/week of MVPA or 30 min/day of MVPA on at least 5 days. Multivariate regressions were used for analysis. RESULTS: 316 participants were recruited, but 228 provided valid accelerometer data (69.5±6.86 years, 32% male). On an average day the participants spent 303.7±87.1 min/day in SB, 375.4±88.5 min/day in LPA and 40.8±29.3 min/day in MVPA. In relative terms, the older adults spent 42.3±11.5% of their waking hours in SB and only 5.6±3.9% in MVPA per day. Age was negatively associated with time spent in MPA (β=-0.75 min/day, p=0.003) and MVPA (β=-0.78 min/day, p<0.001). Being male was positively associated with MPA (β=14.7 min/day, p<0.001), VPA (β=1.0 min/day, p<0.001) and MVPA (β=15.7 min/day, p<0.001). 33.3% of the sample met the PA recommendations with no differences by gender. The oldest old were less likely to meet PA recommendations (OR=0.93, p=0.003). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides relevant information for reinforcing strategies to promote PA in elderly population, considering that the oldest old and women were less likely to engage in MVPA. Funded by CONICYT-CNPq/PCI/441970/2016-8 , DIUFRO16-0110 , DIE17-0006