The mediation and interaction of the obesity index between moderate-vigorous recreational physical activity and hypertension

Bingqian Du; Yuting Li; Yun Xia; Shan Wu; Yuan Wei; Zhihao Wang; Shupei Wang; Jiao Guo; Qing Zhu; Tianran Shen; Qingsong Chen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0296333

The mediation and interaction of the obesity index between moderate-vigorous recreational physical activity and hypertension

PLoS One. 2023 Dec 28;18(12):e0296333. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296333. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Bingqian Du^{1

2

3}, Yuting Li^{1

2}, Yun Xia^{1

2}, Shan Wu^{1

2}, Yuan Wei^{1

2}, Zhihao Wang^{1

2}, Shupei Wang^{1

2}, Jiao Guo^{4

5

6

7}, Qing Zhu^{4

5

6}, Tianran Shen^{1

2}, Qingsong Chen^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Public Health, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, China.
² Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Public Health Detection and Assessment, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, China.
³ National Key Laboratory of Intelligent Tracking and Forecasting for Infectious Disease, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China.
⁴ Guangdong Metabolic Diseases Research Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, Guangzhou, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Glucolipid Metabolic Disorder, Guangzhou, China.
⁶ Institute of Chinese Medicine, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, China.
⁷ Guangdong TCM Key Laboratory for Metabolic Diseases, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

Previous studies showed that physical activity (PA) is concerned with hypertension (HTN). However, the mediation and interaction role of the obesity index: body mass index (BMI), waist-hip ratio (WHR), body fat rate (BFR) and visceral fat index (VFI) between PA and HTN has never been studied. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the mediation and interaction of the obesity index between moderate-vigorous recreational physical activity (MVRPA) and HTN. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 4710 individuals aged 41 or older in Torch Development Zone, Zhongshan City. The mediation and interaction of the obesity index were evaluated by a four-way decomposition. 48.07% of participants had HTN among these groups. In the adjusted linear regression model, MVRPA was significantly correlated with WHR (β±SE = -0.005±0.002; P<0.05). Compared to sufficient MVRPA (odds ratio (OR) = 1.35), 95% (confidence interval (CI) = 1.17-1.56), insufficient MVRPA increased the risk of developing HTN. Furthermore, there were associations between BMI, WHR, BFR, VFI and HTN where the adjusted ORs and 95% CIs were 1.11 (1.09-1.13), 6.23 (2.61-14.90), 1.04 (1.03-1.06), 1.07 (1.06-1.09), respectively. The mediation analyses suggested that the impact of MVRPA on HTN risk may partly be explained by changes in obesity index, with a pure indirect mediation of WHR between MVRPA and HTN (P<0.05). Therefore, weight control, especially reducing abdominal obesity and maintaining adequate MVRPA, may lead to more proper control of HTN.

Copyright: © 2023 Du et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

MeSH terms

Body Mass Index
Cross-Sectional Studies
Exercise
Humans
Hypertension* / epidemiology
Obesity*
Risk Factors
Waist-Hip Ratio

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Key Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (81830113) (JG); National key R & D plan of China "Research on modernization of traditional Chinese medicine" (2018YFC1704200) (JG) and Guangzhou Basic and Applied Basic Research General Project (202201010545) (TS). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.