Association of fitness and waist circumference with hypertension in Brazilian elderly women.

Background: The protective effect of cardiorespiratory fitness, regardless of obesity, has been recognized in adults. However, this association is still not clear in elderly individuals.

Objective: To analyze the association between hypertension and cardiorespiratory fitness in 1,064 elderly Brazilian women.

Methods: Central obesity was estimated by waist circumference and cardiorespiratory fitness by the 6-minutes walk test. ANOVA one way, chi-square and logistic regression were used for the statistical analysis.

Results: The prevalence of hypertension was 53.9%. The central obesity group had higher odds for hypertension when compared with the non-central-obesity group, in the same cardiorespiratory fitness group. Furthermore, both the central obesity and non-central obesity groups had a progressive increase in the odds ratio for hypertension, from the highest to lowest fitness groups, indicating an inverse relation between fitness and central adiposity. The non-central obesity group had the lowest odds ratios (OR), 1.49 (95%IC 0.97-2.28) and 1.54 (95%IC 0.94-2.51); whereas the central obesity group had an OR of 2.08 (95%IC 1.47-2.93), 2.79 (95%IC 1.79-4.33) and 3.09 (95%IC 1.86-5.12).

Conclusion: Our findings indicated that the waist circumference measurement is a strong predictor of hypertension and suggested that the protective effect of cardiorespiratory fitness can be extended to elderly women, even to those with central obesity.