News Section | Children's Health
Less exercise may lead to heart disease even in healthy 9-yr-old kids
A new study has revealed that healthy children as young as nine-year-old can start to show an increased risk of future heart problems if they are physically inactive.
Researchers from Sweden and Denmark studied 223 children – 123 boys and 100 girls – with an average age of 9.8 years, assessing their physical activity levels over four days.
They found that the children who were more physically active had a lower composite risk factor score for cardiovascular disease (CVD) than the children with lower amounts of moderate to vigorous physical activity and vigorous physical activity.
“It is well known that physical inactivity in adults is associated with a wide range of diseases and all causes of death” said lead author Tina Tanha from the Department of Clinical Sciences at Skane University Hospital in Malmo, Sweden.
“We believe that our study now demonstrates a clear clinical association between physical inactivity and multiple CVD risk factors in children. It reveals that up to 11 per cent of the variance in composite CVD risk factor scores in the children could be explained by differences in their physical activity,” she said.
The study was published in the May issue of Acta Paediatrica.
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