24-h movement behaviors from infancy to preschool: cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships with body composition and bone health

Abstract

BackgroundNew physical activity guidelines for children address all movement behaviors across the 24-h day (physical activity, sedentary behavior, sleep), but how each component relates to body composition when adjusted for the compositional nature of 24-h data is uncertain.AimsTo i) describe 24-h movement behaviors from 1 to 5 years of age, ii) determine cross-sectional relationships with body mass index (BMI) z-score, iii) determine whether movement behaviors from 1 to 5 years of age predict body composition and bone health at 5 years.Methods24-h accelerometry data were collected in 380 children over 5–7 days at 1, 2, 3.5 and 5 years of age to determine the proportion of the day spent: sedentary (including wake after sleep onset), in light (LPA) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and asleep (including naps). BMI was determined at each age and a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan measured fat mass, bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD) at 5 years of age. 24-h movement data were transformed into isometric log-ratio co-ordinates for multivariable regression analysis and effect sizes back-transformed.ResultsAt age 1, children spent 49.6% of the 24-h day asleep, 38.2% sedentary, 12.1% in LPA, and 0.1% in MVPA, with corresponding figures of 44.4, 33.8, 19.8 and 1.9% at 5 years of age. Compositional time use was only related significantly to BMI z-score at 3.5 years in cross-sectional analyses. A 10% increase in mean sleep time (65 min) was associated with a lower BMI z-score (estimated difference, − 0.25; 95% CI, − 0.42 to − 0.08), whereas greater time spent sedentary (10%, 47 min) or in LPA (10%, 29 min) were associated with higher BMI z-scores (0.12 and 0.08 respectively, both p < 0.05). Compositional time use from 1 to 3.5 years was not related to future BMI z-score or percent fat. Although MVPA at 2 and 3.5 years was consistently associated with higher BMD and BMC at 5 years, actual differences were small.ConclusionsConsiderable changes in compositional time use occur from 1 to 5 years of age, but there is little association with adiposity. Although early MVPA predicted better bone health, the differences observed had little clinical relevance.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov number NCT00892983.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12966-018-0753-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Infants’ and toddlers’ physical activity and sedentary time as measured by accelerometry: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Further, device type has also been noted to influence movement behaviour estimates; Vanderloo and colleagues [53] found that when comparing the Actical™ and ActiGraph™ in a sample of preschoolers (n = 23); the ActiGraph™ reported 6.6 more min/hour of MVPA than the Actical™. This hourly discrepancy would result in substantial variation in MVPA across an entire day; as evidenced by the present review, the 3 lowest MVPA rates reported (i.e., 6.5 [25], 8.3 [46], and 8.5 [45] min/ day) were all from studies using the Actical™ device. While these rates may have also been a function of the epoch length used and intensity cut-points applied, interpreting physical activity data from studies using different devices and wear locations remains a challenge that needs to be addressed [53].…”

“…In cases where more than one article presented baseline data on the same sample of children (Melbourne InFANT Program [23], GET UP! [24], POI [25], IDEFICS [26], Generation R [27], Early STOPP [28], and PREPS [29]), the article with the largest sample size and/or most accurately reflected full day movement behaviours was included.…”

“…Studies were conducted in 16 different countries, including 8 in the United States [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43], 4 in Canada [29,[44][45][46] and Australia [23,24,47,48], 2 in China [28,49] and Sweden [26,28], and 1 in Belgium [26], Estonia [26], Germany [26], Hungary [26], Italy [26], Malawi [50], the Netherlands [27], New Zealand [25], Spain [26], Switzerland [33], and Taiwan [51] (note that one study was conducted in both China and Sweden [28] and one study was conducted in Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Sweden [26]). The mean sample size of included studies was 142 children (range = 7 to 568), and all studies were published in 2011 or later (88% since 2015).…”

Sleep during Infancy and Associations with Childhood Body Composition: A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis

“…Studies were published between 2008 and 2019, with 11 of the 19 published in 2016 or later. All studies had a longitudinal design: 14 observational studies [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] and 5 randomized clinical trials 6,[38][39][40]53 were included.…”

“…Two of them showed healthier weight at age 1-2 years, but not necessarily due to longer sleep duration. 8,53 The first explanation for the lack of consistent evidence for an association is that sleep duration at infant age may only have a temporary effect on body composition, but not a longer-term effect. If so, this opens opportunity to change sleep habits at an early age to improve later healthy sleep habits and body composition.…”