HealthDay News — For middle-aged men, low physical activity and high sedentary time are associated with an increased risk for heart failure, according to researchers.
“[T]he results from this large, prospective study of a racially/ethnically diverse population bolster the accumulating evidence of the importance of a physically active and nonsedentary lifestyle for reducing the risk of heart failure,” Deborah Rohm Young, PhD, from Kaiser Permanente Southern California in Pasadena, and colleagues reported in Circulation: Heart Failure.
They examined the correlation between physical activity and prolonged sedentary time on heart failure in 82,695 men aged 45 years or older who participated in the California Men’s Health Study during 10 years of follow-up. Overall, 3,473 men were diagnosed with heart failure at mean 7.8 year follow-up.
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Heart failure incidence decreased across physical activity levels, at 7.8, 4.9 and 3.8 per 1000 person-years for low, medium and high physical activity categories, respectively.
The hazard ratio for heart failure was 1.52 in the lowest versus the highest physical activity category (95% CI: 1.39–1.68) after adjusting for confounding variables, including sedentary time, sociodemographics, hypertension, diabetes, unfavorable lipid levels, BMI, smoking and diet. Increased risk was also seen for those in the medium physical activity category (hazard ratio, 1.17; 95% CI: 1.06–1.29).
“Low physical activity increased HF risk for those with and without coronary heart disease, with the risk twice as great for men without CHD (32% vs. 70%, respectively),” the researchers wrote.
Heart failure incidence also decreased with less sedentary time, with 3.8 cases per 1000 person-years for the low sedentary time category, 5.6 for medium and 8.8 for high categories.
After adjusting for the same variables and physical activity, the hazard ratio for heart failure was 1.34 in the highest versus the lowest sedentary category and 1.13 for the medium sedentary time category (P<0.0001 for trend).
HF risk increased for the medium and high sedentary time categories for men without hypertension, and for those in the high sedentary time group who had hypertension, but only for those without CHD.
“[T]he results from this large, prospective study of a racially/ethnically diverse population bolster the accumulating evidence of the importance of a physically active and nonsedentary lifestyle for reducing the risk of heart failure,” the authors write.
