Mediation role of cardiorespiratory fitness on the association between fatness and cardiometabolic risk in European adolescents: The HELENA study

Abstract

Highlights Three important indicators of fatness (body mass index, wait to hip ratio, and fat mass index) show a significant and positive association with a powerful indicator of cardiometabolic risk in adolescents. Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) shows a significant and inverse relationship with the cardiometabolic risk of adolescents. To date, the mediating role of CRF in the relationship of fatness and cardiometabolic risk in adolescents has not been demonstrated. The CRF is capable of partially mediating (approximately 10%) the association of fatness and cardiometabolic risk. Decreasing fatness indicators and increasing CRF are necessary to improve adolescent cardiometabolic health.

Benefits of Regular Table Tennis Practice in Body Composition and Physical Fitness Compared to Physically Active Children Aged 10–11 Years

“…This is relevant in todays’ world, considering that insufficient physical activity has raised the level of unhealthy body composition, e.g., overweight and obesity are at epidemic proportions with an alarming increase of ten-fold over the last forty years [ 13 ]. Interestingly, while natural sex differences in body composition and physical fitness could exist during childhood [ 14 , 15 ], increments in cardiovascular fitness through exercise positively contribute to reducing excess weight and cardiometabolic risk factors (body mass index, waist to hip ratio, and fat mass index) in adolescents, regardless of sex [ 16 ]. Accordingly, table tennis can be an effective strategy to encourage children and adolescents to undertake regular physical activity for optimal health outcomes and to limit sedentary behavior, particularly recreational screen time [ 17 ].…”

Percentiles and Principal Component Analysis of Physical Fitness From a Big Sample of Children and Adolescents Aged 6-18 Years: The DAFIS Project

“…Thus, assessing physical fitness has emerged as a proxy of the health status of children and adolescents and consequently as relevant from a public health point of view (Ortega et al, 2008b;Cadenas-Sanchez et al, 2016). In this regard, several research projects have been conducted to establish both normative values of school populations (Castro-Piñero et al, 2009;Ortega et al, 2011a;De Miguel-Etayo et al, 2014;Tomkinson et al, 2017;Cadenas-Sanchez et al, 2019;Kolimechkov et al, 2019) and cut-off points in the outputs of fitness tests that identify health risk profiles in children and youth (Ruiz et al, 2016;Castro-Piñero et al, 2019;Cristi-Montero et al, 2019;Lang et al, 2019). These approaches are usually based on cross-sectional designs that provide information associated to a determined time-point.…”

Neck circumference and cardiometabolic risk in children and adolescents: the moderator role of cardiorespiratory fitness

“…Also, the applied analyzes made it possible to establish the level of CRF that children and adolescents must achieve to protect against cardiometabolic risk when NC is considered. The relationship between CRF and different anthropometric indicators has been widely shown in the literature, which includes an inverse association with BMI, waist circumference, and waist to height ratio [42][43][44][45][46]. However, much less is known about the relation between CRF and NC.…”

“…Confirming the idea that appropriate levels CRF, indeed, can mitigate the consequences of body adiposity on cardiometabolic health, although our data showed that only very high CRF levels exert a protection. Still, it is suggested that regardless of body weight, it is important to achieve appropriate CRF levels [ 44 , 52 , 53 ]. This aspect is of great relevance, mainly when considering that the development of different cardiometabolic risk factors has its origin in childhood and can be taken to adulthood [ 54 ].…”