Body composition, physical fitness and physical activity in Mozambican children and adolescents living with HIV

Abstract

Introduction As a result of the effectiveness of antiretroviral drugs (ART), HIV/AIDS has become a chronic disease, which has enabled children living with HIV to reach adolescence and adulthood. However, the long exposure to both the disease and ART has caused undesirable effects that compromise the physiological functioning and the quality of life of the subjects. Objective To determine the body composition, physical fitness and habitual physical activity of children and adolescents living with HIV on ART. Methods A total of 79 subjects of both genders aged 8–14 years, living with HIV in ART, selected by convenience participated in the study. The subjects underwent anthropometric assessment, physical fitness assessment and physical activity assessment. Results Relative to reference norms, the values of the anthropometric indicators fell below 50th percentile (height/age = 92.4%; BMI/age 72.2%; sum of skinfolds = 51.9%; arm circumference = 63.3%). The prevalence of “low height/age” and “low weight/age” was 34.9% and 9.3%, respectively for boys, and 27.9% and 11.1%, respectively for girls. With the exception of trunk flexibility (12.3%), most subjects were considered unfit in the physical fitness tests (abdominal resistance = 76.4%; handgrip strength = 75.4%; lower limb power = 66.4%). The percentage of subjects with insufficient physical activity was 45.5% for boys and 77.8% for girls. The values for all variables were consistently and significantly lower when compared with studies done in Mozambicans boys and girls without HIV+ from both urban and rural areas. Conclusion The subjects participants in the study living with HIV and undergoing ART had impaired growth, low physical fitness and low levels of habitual physical activity in relation to the reference values of their peers without HIV, which compromised their physiological functioning and their quality of life.

Health-Related Physical Fitness Evaluation in HIV-Diagnosed Children and Adolescents: A Scoping Review

“…Observing the aim of the studies, the results of the present scoping review reflect a broad descriptive investigation of differences between HIV-diagnosed populations and HIV non diagnosed peers [11,19,21,[23][24][25][26]29,30,38,51,73,, prevalences related to health-related physical fitness components [12,[117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124] and different associations [7,8,10,14,15,18,20,22,27,31,33,36,37,[39][40][41][42][43]45,47, between health-related physical fitness components and variables such as the HIV infection status (viral load, CD4 and CD8 lymphocyte count and immunosuppression status) [8,45,134,150] and use of different ART regimens [19,…”

“…In addition to that, studies that aimed to investigate the relationship between HIV infection/ART use and the health-related physical fitness components showed changes in the body fat distribution [91,104,194,264], reduction in the bone mass [15,84,108,124,209,262] and fat-free mass [8,102]. However, only 12.2% (n = 30) of the studies investigated more than one the health-related physical fitness component [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]33,34,41,47,50,52,106,110,112,116,192,196,[221][222][223]226,230,233,238] and no study that investigated the relationship between the health-related physical fitness components was found. Muscular strength/endurance is directly associated with the amount of muscle fibers-that is, related to the amount of fat-free mass, specifically muscle tissue, as well as cardiorespiratory fitness-is directly associated with the amount of type I (oxidative) muscle fibers …”

“…The investigation of health-related physical fitness in children and adolescents has been widely used to identify and understand those possible adverse effects of HIV infection/ART use such as changes in body composition (alterations in body fat distribution, reduction in bone mineral content and fat-free mass) [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]; reduced cardiorespiratory fitness [22][23][24][25][26]; reduced muscular strength/endurance [26][27][28][29][30]; and reduced flexibility [24,26,31]. However, studies that investigated HIV-diagnosed children and adolescents ended up developing their own methods/protocols for evaluating the health-related physical fitness [32][33][34][35] and also used empirical cut-points for physical fitness tests to classify the participants [19,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

Association between Phase Angle and Body Composition of Children and Adolescents Diagnosed with HIV Infection

“…These factors result in a decrease in bone mass gains during growth. Furthermore, the pediatric population with HIV may have lipodystrophy syndrome (loss and/or accumulation of body fat) and loss of muscle mass, which negatively affects their health and quality of life [ 3 , 4 ]. In addition, research with children and adolescents diagnosed with HIV found that this population had delayed sexual maturation, which is mediated by physical growth variables [ 5 ].…”

Perinatal HIV infection is associated with deficits in muscle function in children and adolescents in Zimbabwe

“…Studies of HIV in adults report impaired muscle function [8,9]; however, few studies, particularly in Africa, have investigated muscle function in CWH. Those reported are often small, lack a control population [10,11], or focus on treatment-naive individuals [12]. A recent systematic review of just five cross-sectional studies (none in Africa), totalling 197 adolescents (age 16-18 years) living with HIV, identified reduced muscle strength and physical fitness compared with uninfected peers [13].…”