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Objectively measured physical activity and fat mass in a large cohort of children

Ness, AR; Leary, SD; Mattocks, C; Blair, SN; Reilly, JJ; Wells, J; Ingle, S; ... Riddoch, C; + view all (2007) Objectively measured physical activity and fat mass in a large cohort of children. PLoS Medicine , 4 (3) e97 -. 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040097. Green open access

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Abstract

Background Previous studies have been unable to characterise the association between physical activity and obesity, possibly because most relied on inaccurate measures of physical activity and obesity. Methods and Findings We carried out a cross sectional analysis on 5,500 12-year-old children enrolled in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Total physical activity and minutes of moderate and vigorous physical activity (MVPA) were measured using the Actigraph accelerometer. Fat mass and obesity (defined as the top decile of fat mass) were measured using the Lunar Prodigy dual x-ray emission absorptiometry scanner. We found strong negative associations between MVPA and fat mass that were unaltered after adjustment for total physical activity. We found a strong negative dose-response association between MVPA and obesity. The odds ratio for obesity in adjusted models between top and the bottom quintiles of minutes of MVPA was 0.03 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.01–0.13, p-value for trend <0.0001) in boys and 0.36 (95% CI 0.17–0.74, p-value for trend = 0.006) in girls. Conclusions We demonstrated a strong graded inverse association between physical activity and obesity that was stronger in boys. Our data suggest that higher intensity physical activity may be more important than total activity.

Type: Article
Title: Objectively measured physical activity and fat mass in a large cohort of children
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040097
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040097
Language: English
Additional information: © 2007 Ness et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords: children
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/165415
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