Associations between adiposity and physical activity and sedentary behaviour patterns in older women

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the cross-sectional associations between the total amount and defined bouts of PA and SB with adiposity indicators in older women.

Methods: Data on 313 community-dwelling women was used. All women wore an accelerometer for one week and undergone the body composition analysis. We used three adiposity indicators: fat mass percentage (FM%), visceral fat area (VFA), fat mass index (FMI); and the fat-free mass index indicator (FFMI). In multiple linear regression analyses, we adjusted the models for the following confounders: age, wear time, socio-demographic information, smoking, and health status.

Results: The mean values of FM%, VFA, FMI, and FFMI were 36.1%, 125.9 cm, 10 kg ⋅ m-2 and 17 kg ⋅ m-2, respectively. Each additional 150 minutes of MVPA per week (regardless of bout length) was associated with a decrease of 3.0% in FM%, 12 cm2 in VFA, and 1.5 kg ⋅ m-2 in FMI. Regarding strong association with bout frequency, doing MVPA lasting ≥ 10 minutes 15 times/week (to meet the target of at least 150 minutes of MVPA/week) would be associated with a decrease of 4.8% in FM%, 24.15 cm2 in VFA, and 2.55 kg ⋅ m-2 in FMI. Significant positive associations for FM%, VFA, and FMI were found with the duration and frequency of sedentary bouts lasting ≥ 20 minutes (β ranging from 0.05-0.42).

Conclusions: Significant associations between fat indicators and both PA and SB were found in elderly women. The beneficial associations were much larger for frequency than for duration of bouted MVPA lasting ≥ 10 minutes. The results from this study using SB and PA in terms of total accumulated time and different bouts could be useful for designing interventions for community-dwelling older women.