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Light-to-moderate leisure activity wards off AF
7 August 2008
MedWire News: Older adults can reduce their risk for developing atrial fibrillation (AF) by engaging in regular light or moderate leisure time physical activity, say US researchers.
"The findings suggest that long-term benefits of habitual light-to-moderate physical activity in older adults outweigh any potential higher risks of AF associated with the acute activity or exercise," commented lead researcher Dariush Mozaffarian (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts).
The results emerge from a study of 5446 people, aged an average of 73 years at baseline, who were participating in the Cardiovascular Health Study. During 12 years of follow-up, 1061 participants developed AF.
Mozaffarian and team found that participants' leisure time activity predicted their propensity to develop AF, with this risk being 25%, 22%, and 36% lower among participants in the third, fourth, and fifth quintiles of activity, respectively, relative to those in the first quintile (p<0.001 for trend).
Amount and intensity of exercise were determined via the Minnesota Leisure time Activities questionnaire. The first to fifth quintiles of activity correspond to burning <35 to >1840 kcal per week.
Overall, engaging in moderate-intensity exercise lowered participants' risk for AF by 28% compared with no exercise, but engaging in high-intensity exercise did not significantly affect AF risk.
The distance and pace that participants walked each week also negatively correlated with AF risk (p<0.001).
Mozaffarian et al identified exercise cutoffs below which participants were at substantially increased risk for developing AF. These were moderate leisure time activity of about 600 kcal/week, walking distance of 12 blocks per week, and a walking pace of 2 miles per hour. The team calculates that 26% of AF cases in the study cohort were attributable to participants failing to meet these specifications.
"Overall, one in five of these older US adults developed AH during 12 years of follow-up," the researchers write in the journal Circulation.
"These results suggest that these easily achievable lifestyle habits should be further evaluated as potential preventive measures to reduce the incidence of AF in the particularly high-risk and growing population of older adults."
