Accelerometer-Measured Sedentary and Physical Activity Time and Their Correlates in European Older Adults: The SITLESS Study

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Abstract

Background: Sedentary behavior (SB) and physical activity (PA) are important determinants of health in older adults. This study aimed to describe the composition of accelerometer-measured SB and PA in older adults, to explore self-reported context-specific SB, and to assess sociodemographic and functional correlates of engaging in higher levels of SB in participants of a multicenter study including four European countries. Method: One thousand three hundred and sixty community-dwelling older adults from the SITLESS study (61.8% women; 75.3±6.3 years) completed a self-reported SB questionnaire and wore an ActiGraph accelerometer for 7 days. Accelerometer-determined compositional descriptive statistics were calculated. A fixed-effects regression analysis was conducted to assess the sociodemographic (country, age, sex, civil status, education, and medications) and functional (body mass index and gait speed) correlates. Results: Older adults spent 78.8% of waking time in SB, 18.6% in light-intensity PA, and 2.6% in moderate-to-vigorous PA. Accelerometry showed that women engaged in more light-intensity PA and walking and men engaged in higher amounts of moderate-to-vigorous PA. Watching television and reading accounted for 47.2% of waking time. Older age, being a man, single, taking more medications, being obese and overweight, and having a slower gait speed were statistically significant correlates of more sedentary time. Conclusions: The high amount of SB of our participants justifies the need to develop and evaluate interventions to reduce sitting time. A clinically relevant change in gait speed can decrease almost 0.45 percentage points of sedentary time. The distribution of context-specific sedentary activities by country and sex showed minor differences, albeit worth noting.

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Giné-Garriga, M., Sansano-Nadal, O., Tully, M. A., Caserotti, P., Coll-Planas, L., Rothenbacher, D., … Newman, A. (2020). Accelerometer-Measured Sedentary and Physical Activity Time and Their Correlates in European Older Adults: The SITLESS Study. Journals of Gerontology - Series A Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 75(9), 1754–1762. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glaa016

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