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. 2025 Jun 25;22(7):1002.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph22071002.

Twenty-Four-Hour Compositional Data Analysis in Healthcare: Clinical Potential and Future Directions

Cain Craig Truman Clark  1 , Clarice Maria de Lucena Martins  2
Affiliations

Twenty-Four-Hour Compositional Data Analysis in Healthcare: Clinical Potential and Future Directions

Cain Craig Truman Clark et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Compositional Data Analysis (CoDA) is a powerful statistical approach for analyzing 24 h time-use data, effectively addressing the interdependence of sleep, sedentary behavior, and physical activity. Unlike traditional methods that struggle with perfect multicollinearity, CoDA handles time use as proportions of a whole, providing biologically meaningful insights into how daily activity patterns relate to health. Applications in epidemiology have linked variations in time allocation between behaviors to key health outcomes, including adiposity, cardiometabolic health, cognitive function, fitness, quality of life, glycomics, clinical psychometrics, and mental well-being. Research consistently shows that reallocating time from sedentary behavior to sleep or moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) improves health outcomes. Importantly, CoDA reveals that optimal activity patterns vary across populations, supporting the need for personalized, context-specific recommendations rather than one-size-fits-all guidelines. By overcoming challenges in implementation and interpretation, CoDA has the potential to transform healthcare analytics and deepen our understanding of lifestyle behaviors' impact on health.

Keywords: Compositional Data Analysis; behavior; epidemiology; time use.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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