Titration of sedentary behavior with varying physical activity levels reduces mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes

J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2024 May 13:dgae323. doi: 10.1210/clinem/dgae323. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Context: Both physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) exert important impact on type 2 diabetes, but it remains unclear how maximum impact on improving the mortality and optimized proportion of the two lifestyles combination exists.

Objective: To explore the impacts of PA/SB combinations on mortality in patients with diabetes.

Methods: Patients with type 2 diabetes patients samplings were collected from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) dataset. Their lifestyles were categorized into eight groups based on combinations of the PA and SB levels. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals.

Results: During the follow-up period, 1,148 deaths (18.94%) were recorded. High SB (sedentary time ≥6 hours/day) was significantly associated with higher all-cause mortality (HR 1.65). In participants with low SB (<6 hours/day), low PA was associated with lower all-cause mortality (HR 0.43), while further increase of PA level did not show further reduction in either all-cause or cardiovascular mortality. In contrast, in participants with high SB,all levels of PA were associated with lower all-cause mortality (p<0.05), but only moderate PA was associated with lower cardiovascular mortality (HR 0.30).

Conclusions: In patients with type 2 diabetes, different combinations of various levels of PA and SB are associated with different degree of risk for all-cause or cardiovascular mortality.

Keywords: NHANES; all-cause mortality; cardiovascular mortality; physical activity; sedentary behaviors; type 2 diabetes mellitus.