Associations between patterns of objectively measured physical activity and risk factors for the metabolic syndrome.

Purpose: To determine whether certain patterns of objectively measured physical activity (PA) are associated with the risk factors for or the diagnosis of the metabolic syndrome (MS).

Design: Latent class analysis, including assessment of the associations between latent PA classes and risk factors for the MS.

Setting: Random sample from throughout the United States using data from the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Subjects: A total of 3458 civilian adult noninstitutionalized U.S. citizens.

Measures: Daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA across a 7-day week based on accelerometer measurements, as well as high blood pressure, blood glucose levels, triglyceride levels, and body mass index, along with low levels of high density lipoproteins, using clinical cut points.

Results: Membership in the more active PA classes was consistently associated with lower odds of all risk factors for the MS. However, when participants were categorized into quartiles of the coefficients of variation of PA across 7 days, few differences were seen in any of the risk factors.

Conclusions: Accumulating the total weekly recommended amount of PA is consistently associated with positive health profiles, and more PA than the recommended amounts may be even better. However, the manner in which this activity is accumulated, either spread over most days of the week or compressed into just a couple of days, may have similar associations with the risk factors for the MS.