Association of physical activity pattern and risk of Parkinson's disease

Abstract

Increasing evidence suggests an association between exercise duration and Parkinson's disease. However, no high-quality prospective evidence exists confirming whether differences exist between the two modes of exercise, weekend warrior and equal distribution of exercise duration, and Parkinson's risk. Hence, this study aimed to explore the association between different exercise patterns and Parkinson's risk using exercise data from the UK Biobank. The study analyzed data from 89,400 UK Biobank participants without Parkinson's disease. Exercise data were collected using the Axivity AX3 wrist-worn triaxial accelerometer. Participants were categorized into three groups: inactive, regularly active, and engaged in the weekend warrior (WW) pattern. The relationship between these exercise patterns and Parkinson's risk was assessed using a multifactorial Cox model. During a mean follow-up of 12.32 years, 329 individuals developed Parkinson's disease. In a multifactorial Cox model, using the World Health Organization-recommended threshold of 150 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week, both the active WW group [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.58; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.43-0.78; P < 0.001] and the active regular group (HR = 0.44; 95% CI = 0.34-0.57; P < 0.001) exhibited a lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease compared with the inactive group. Further, no statistically significant difference was observed between the active WW and the active regular groups (HR = 0.77; 95% CI = 0.56-1.05; P = 0.099). In conclusion, in this cohort study, both the WW exercise pattern and an equal distribution of exercise hours were equally effective in reducing Parkinson's risk.

Fig. 1. Distribution of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) on top 2 days vs remaining 5 days among active individuals using guideline-based activity threshold of 150 min or more of MVPA per week.

a Regular activity and b Weekend warrior activity. ¹Top 2d means the sum of the two days with the most MVPA hours in a week; Remaining 5d means the total MVPA hours for the remaining 5 days. ²the density of the y-axis represents the probability density. The y-axis reflects the relative numbers of people corresponding to each MVPA minutes.

Fig. 2. Association between physical activity patterns and Parkinson’s disease.

a WW defined as ≧101 min of MVPA/wk (25th percentile)with ≧50% over 1–2d, b WW defined as ≧150 min of MVPA/wk(guideline based) with ≧50% over 1–2d, c WW defined as ≧230 min of MVPA/wk (median)with ≧50% over 1–2d and d WW defined as ≧403 min of MVPA/wk (75th percentile) with ≧50% over 1–2d.

Fig. 3. Selection of study participants in the UK Biobank.

The diagram provides a schematic illustration for the participant inclusion process in our study.