Recommended Levels of Physical Activity Are Associated with Reduced Risk of the Metabolic Syndrome in Mexican-Americans

Abstract

Purpose: To measure the association between physical activity and the metabolic syndrome risk in Mexican-Americans.

Methods: Participants were drawn from the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort (n = 3,414), a randomly selected Mexican-American cohort in Texas on the US-Mexico border. Moderate and vigorous physical activity was assessed using reliable and validated instruments. The metabolic syndrome was defined as having 3 or more metabolic abnormalities.

Results: One thousand five hundred and twenty-four participants of the cohort (45.02%) were found to have the metabolic syndrome. Compared to participants who did not meet US physical activity guidelines, participants who met physical activity guidelines of 150 moderate and vigorous minutes per week (≥ 600 MET adjusted minutes) had 36% lower risk for the metabolic syndrome (OR = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.42-0.98), and participants with total minutes per week of moderate and vigorous/strenuous activity greater than 743 MET adjusted minutes had 37% lower risk for the metabolic syndrome (OR = 0.63; 95% CI: 0.42-0.94) compared with their counterparts, after adjusting for age, gender, annual household income, body mass index, smoking and alcohol drinking status, total portions of fruit and vegetable intake, census tracts and blocks, and survey version for physical activity.

Conclusions: Meeting or exceeding physical activity guidelines significantly was inversely associated with the risk for the metabolic syndrome in Mexican-Americans. Improving levels of physical activity appears to be an effective target for the metabolic syndrome prevention and control among Mexican-Americans independent of other factors.

Fig 1. Smoothed plot for odds ratios (ORs) of the metabolic syndrome risk according to total metabolic equivalent (MET) hours of physical activity per week.

The ORs were estimated by using the restricted cubic-spline logistic regression models with knots placed at the 5^th, 50^th, and 95^th percentiles of physical activity. The overall association between physical activity and the risk of the metabolic syndrome was significant (P = 0.02). The model was adjusted for age, sex, annual household income, cigarette smoking status, alcohol drinking status, body mass index, total consumption of fruit and vegetables, discrepancies in survey versions for physical activity data collection and the probability of sampling using weights taking into consideration clustering effects arising from the same census block and household.