In a recent study published within the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers investigated the sex-specific all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risk reductions derived from physical activity. They used a big (n = 412,313) cohort American cohort to discover this association and located that girls derived greater advantages than their male counterparts from equivalent amounts of physical activity.

Historically, nonetheless, women have generally lagged men in exercise engagement. These findings may help inform clinicians and the health-minded of the benefits of physical exertion in combatting chronic heart problems (CVD) and bridge observed “gender gaps” by encouraging women to take up leisure-time physical activity.

Study: Sex Differences in Association of Physical Activity With All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality.

The gender gap and what this implies for sex-specific cardiac health

Cardiovascular mortality stays one in all the leading causes of worldwide human lack of life, alarmingly a possible underestimation when considering that heart problems (CVD) is a commonly reported comorbidity in quite a few non-transmissible and transmissible pathologies. A long time of research have revealed that physical activity (PA) can substantially reduce all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, but records reveal that public involvement in leisure time PA is sorely lacking.

In the USA of America (US) alone, fewer than 25% of residents meet the minimum PA recommendations of 150 min/wk. of moderate PA or 75 min/wk. of vigorous PA prescribed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American College of Cardiology. Significant inter-sex differences in PA engagement further skew these already suboptimal observations – a substantially larger proportion of men are known to have interaction in leisuretime PA than women, which, when combined with differences in physiological responses, exercise capacities, and activity tolerances between the sexes, might lead to significantly different mortality outcomes between these cohorts.

Unfortunately, the empirical outcomes of those “gender gaps” between men and girls have never been tested inside a scientific framework, denying clinicians, policymakers, and the health conscious of the data they should optimize PA-related outcomes. Understanding the role of sex in these associations would allow for improved guidelines aimed toward bridging the gender gap, fostering increased female PA engagement, and reducing overall mortality risk.

In regards to the study

In the current study, researchers aimed to elucidate if PA-derived health advantages differ depending on the sex of the PA-engaging individual. Their cohort was derived from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), a large-scale collaboratory effort carried out by the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics. Established in 1957, the NHIS is a prospective cohort maintaining health records of Americans across 50 states and the District of Columbia, representing a proxy for America’s health.

The present study used participant data from 1997 to 2017 and was initially comprised of 646,279 individuals. Excluding participants with severe cardiovascular conditions (e.g., coronary heart disease), cancers, or missing demographic or medical data resulted in a final cohort of 412,413 adults. Data collection included demographic and medical information (from the NHIS database) and a consistent, standardized questionnaire for PA frequency, duration, and kind assessment, presented at each baseline and follow-up evaluations.

Cox proportional hazard regression models corrected from demographic and clinical covariates were used to evaluate primary outcomes. Likelihood ratio tests were used to compute sex-specific differences in final result estimates.

Study findings

Demographic data collation revealed that 54.7% of included participants were women, greater than 68% of whom were of White ethnicity. The typical age of the study cohort was 43.9 years, and the study collected a complete of 4,911,178 person-years of follow-up data. Through the course of the study, 39,935 participants died from all causes, 11,670 of which were cardiovascular.

Previously observed discrepancies in sex-specific PA engagement were validated on this study, with only 32.5% of ladies engaging in weekly aerobic PA in comparison with 43.1% of male participants. Every PA metric measured within the survey revealed greater male engagement than female, with 15.2% of men achieving the prescription weekly PA goal of 150 min/wk. In contrast, only 10.3% of ladies met this goal.

Nonetheless, hazard analyses present that the few women who do engage in physical activity derive far greater relative health advantages than their male counterparts. In comparison with inactivity, female PA engagement ends in a 24% risk reduction (all-cause mortality), while equivalent PA engagement in men only decreased their mortality risk by 15%.

“In dose-dependent analyses for your complete cohort, the good thing about PA on all-cause mortality peaked at ∼300 min/wk of MVPA after which plateaued. The best mortality profit in men was achieved at 300 min/wk of MVPA with an 18% lower hazard in all-cause mortality. Women derived the same magnitude of profit at 140 min/wk of MVPA, and continued to profit with increasing min/wk of MVPA until the best advantage of 24% lower hazard (HR: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.72-0.80) was achieved at ∼300 min/wk.”

While these findings do require validation in non-American cohorts, where observed results, especially those pertaining to engagement, might vary drastically from those observed herein, this study highlights the profound advantages of PA engagement for each sexes and should play an important role in motivating traditionally hesitant women to take up these activities given the health rewards they supply.