A sedentary lifestyle is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Smartwatches enable accurate daily activity monitoring for physical activity measurement and intervention. Few studies, however, have examined physical activity measures from smartwatches with traditional risk factors associated with future risk for CVD. This study aimed to investigate the association of habitual physical activity measured by smartwatches with predicted CVD risk in adults.
We estimated the association between physical activity and predicted risk of CVD using linear mixed-effects models adjusting for age, sex, wear time, and familial structure. Our study included 903 eFHS participants (9% non-White, 61% women, mean age 53 years) who wore the smartwatch ≥5 hours per day for ≥30 days. Median daily step count was similar among men (7202 with interquartile range 3619) and women (7260 with interquartile range 3068). The average 10-year predicted CVD risk was 4.5% for men and 1.2% for women. Every 1000 steps higher habitual physical activity was associated with 0.18% lower predicted CVD risk.
In this community-based sample of routinely well-phenotyped adults, higher levels of habitual physical activity measured by smartwatch were associated with lower predicted 10-year CVD risk. Future studies should investigate the patterns and level of mobile health-assessed physical activity concerning incident CVD and the ability of mobile health interventions promoting activity on future CVD risk.
Ref: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.120.317578
