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Sedentary Behavior and Cardiovascular Risk in Older Adults: a Scoping Review

  • Elderly + Heart Disease (K. Dharmarajan, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Sedentary behavior is an emerging risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and may be particularly relevant to the cardiovascular health of older adults. This scoping review describes the existing literature examining the prevalence of sedentary time in older adults with CVD and the association of sedentary behavior with cardiovascular risk in older adults. We found that older adults with CVD spend >75 % of their waking day sedentary, and that sedentary time is higher among older adults with CVD than among older adults without CVD. High sedentary behavior is consistently associated with worse cardiac lipid profiles and increased cardiac risk scores in older adults; the associations of sedentary behavior with blood pressure, CVD incidence, and CVD-related mortality among older adults are less clear. Future research with larger sample sizes using validated methods to measure sedentary behavior are needed to clarify the association between sedentary behavior and cardiovascular outcomes in older adults.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Geriatrics, Yale School of Medicine, P.O. Box 208025, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT, 06520-8025, USA

    Alexandra M. Hajduk

  2. Department of Internal Medicine, Section of General Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, 367 Cedar Street, Box 208093, New Haven, CT, 06520-8093, USA

    Sarwat I. Chaudhry

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Correspondence to Alexandra M. Hajduk.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by the author.

Funding

Dr. Hajduk is supported by a training grant from the National Institute on Aging (T32AG1934). Dr. Chaudhry is supported by a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01HL115295; Risk Stratification in Older Persons with Acute Myocardial Infarction: SILVER‐AMI).

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Elderly + Heart Disease

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Hajduk, A.M., Chaudhry, S.I. Sedentary Behavior and Cardiovascular Risk in Older Adults: a Scoping Review. Curr Cardiovasc Risk Rep 10, 5 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12170-016-0485-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12170-016-0485-6

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