Twenty Year Fitness Trends in Young Adults and Incidence of Prediabetes and Diabetes: The CARDIA Study
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-16-2016
Abstract
Aims/hypothesis - The prospective association between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) measured in young adulthood and middle age on development of prediabetes, defined as impaired fasting glucose and/or impaired glucose tolerance, or diabetes by middle age remains unknown. We hypothesised that higher fitness levels would be associated with reduced risk for developing incident prediabetes/diabetes by middle age. Methods - Participants were from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study who were free from prediabetes/diabetes at baseline (year 0 [Y0]: 1985–1986). CRF was quantified by treadmill duration (converted to metabolic equivalents [METs]) at Y0, Y7 and Y20 and prediabetes/diabetes status was assessed at Y0, Y7, Y10, Y15, Y20 and Y25. We use an extended Cox model with CRF as the primary time-varying exposure. BMI was included as a time-varying covariate. The outcome was development of either prediabetes or diabetes after Y0. Model 1 included age, race, sex, field centre, CRF and BMI. Model 2 additionally included baseline (Y0) smoking, energy intake, alcohol intake, education, systolic BP, BP medication use and lipid profile. Results - Higher fitness was associated with lower risk for developing incident prediabetes/diabetes (difference of 1 MET: HR 0.99898 [95% CI 0.99861, 0.99940], p < 0.01), which persisted (difference of 1 MET: HR 0.99872 [95% CI 0.99840, 0.99904], p < 0.01] when adjusting for covariates. Conclusions/interpretation - Examining participants who had fitness measured from young adulthood to middle age, we found that fitness was associated with lower risk for developing prediabetes/diabetes, even when adjusting for BMI over this time period. These findings emphasise the importance of fitness in reducing the health burden of prediabetes and diabetes.
Journal Title
Diabetologia
Journal ISSN
1432-0428
First Page
1
Last Page
7
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1007/s00125-016-3969-5