Abstract
Purpose: Having a low level of physical fitness, especially cardiorespiratory fitness, appears to accelerate age-related aortic stiffening. Whereas, some studies have reported that trunk flexibility is a component of physical fitness, it is also negatively associated with arterial stiffening independent of cardiorespiratory fitness in cross-sectional studies. However, no long-term longitudinal study has determined whether poor trunk flexibility accelerates the progression of age-related aortic stiffening. We examined trunk flexibility and aortic stiffness progression in a 5-year longitudinal study.Methods and Results: A total of 305 apparently healthy men and women participated in this study (49.6 ± 9.5 years of age). Trunk flexibility was measured using a sit-and-reach test. Aortic stiffness was assessed using carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) at baseline and after 5 years. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to assess the association of the annual rate of cfPWV across flexibility levels (low, middle, high). There were no significant differences in baseline cfPWV among the three groups (835 ± 164, 853 ± 140, 855 ± 2.68 cm/s; P = 0.577). Annual ΔcfPWV was significantly higher in the low-flexibility group than in the high-flexibility group (P = 0.009). ANCOVA revealed an inverse relationship between flexibility level and annual ΔcfPWV (14.41 ± 2.73, 9.79 ± 2.59, 2.62 ± 2.68 cm/s/year; P for trend = 0.011). Multiple regression analysis revealed that baseline sit and reach (β = −0.12, −0.70 to −0.01) was independently correlated with ΔcfPWV following adjustment for baseline peak oxygen uptake, age, sex, body fat, heart rate, and cfPWV. The 5-year change in cfPWV was not significantly correlated with 5-year change in sit-and-reach performance (P = 0.859).Conclusion: Poor trunk flexibility is associated with greater progression of age-related aortic stiffening in healthy adults. However, we failed to confirm a significant association between 5-year change in aortic stiffness and 5-year change in trunk flexibility. The association between increased age-related increase in aortic stiffness and deterioration in flexibility due to age may require observation for more than 5 years.
Highlights
Aortic stiffness, as indexed based on pulse wave velocity (PWV), increases progressively with advancing age (Lakatta, 2003) and is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality (Vlachopoulos et al, 2010).Having a high level of physical fitness, especially higher cardiorespiratory fitness, is associated with the suppression of age-related arterial stiffening (Vaitkevicius et al, 1993; Gando et al, 2016)
There were no significant differences in baseline carotid and femoral PWV (cfPWV) among the three groups (P = 0.577)
The paired t-test demonstrated that cfPWV increased significantly during the follow-up period in low and middle flexibility groups
Summary
Having a high level of physical fitness, especially higher cardiorespiratory fitness, is associated with the suppression of age-related arterial stiffening (Vaitkevicius et al, 1993; Gando et al, 2016). We and others have reported that flexibility, a component of physical fitness (Cureton, 1941), is negatively associated with arterial stiffening independent of cardiorespiratory fitness in cross-sectional studies (Yamamoto et al, 2009; Nishiwaki et al, 2014). The loss of trunk flexibility with aging accelerates at the fourth or fifth decade of life, based on 6,000 Flexitest results (Medeiros et al, 2013). The same tendency is observed for age-related arterial stiffening. No long-term longitudinal study has determined whether poor trunk flexibility accelerates the progression of age-related arterial stiffening
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