Sedentary Patterns In People with Intellectual Disability

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Adults and older adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) have low physical activity levels (PALs) and very little is known about the patterns of sedentary time (ST) among them. PURPOSE: To analyze ST patterns of adults and older adults with ID. METHODS: A group of 42 adults and 42 older adults with mild to severe ID were recruited. A health screening questionnaire was completed by each participant and/or legal guardian. Height and weight were obtained to calculate BMI. ST patterns were assessed with ActiGraph accelerometers for 7 consecutive days. RESULTS: Non-significant differences in ST throughout the week were observed. Non-significant differences between gender groups were found for ST. A significant difference was found for age groups where adults present a higher number of breaks per sedentary hour than older adults (P = 0.048) and the obese participants spent more time on SB than those participants with a normal BMI (P = 0.042). We also found that the number of bouts in SB per day increased in those participants with higher BMI values (P = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: These groups of subjects with ID showed a high prevalence of ST (79,4% of monitoring time). Interestingly, when comparing age and/or gender groups, no differences were observed for ST. Our findings provide novel and valuable information to be considered in future interventions aiming to increase PAL and reduce ST. Well-designed interventions and preventive health strategies in this specific population are recommended. Partially supported by: MEC (Ref: DEP2012-35335) & AGAUR (Ref: 2013FI_B2 00091)Table 1: Descriptive characteristics of the participants.Table 2: Time in sedentary, percentage of sedentary behavior·day-1, number of sedentary bouts·day-1, and number of breaks per sedentary hour.