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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 1|pp 134—149

Correlates of change in accelerometer-assessed total sedentary time and prolonged sedentary bouts among older English adults: results from five-year follow-up in the EPIC-Norfolk cohort

Dharani Yerrakalva1, Samantha Hajna2, Katrien Wijndaele2, Kate Westgate2, Kay-Tee Khaw1, Nick Wareham2, Simon J Griffin1,2, Soren Brage2
  • 1Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, Cambridge, UK
  • 2MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, School of Clinical Medicine, Cambridge, UK
Received: September 12, 2020Accepted: December 18, 2020Published: January 11, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202497

Copyright: © 2021 Yerrakalva et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Background: Development of effective strategies to reduce sedentary time among older adults necessitates understanding of its determinants but longitudinal studies of this utilising objective measures are scarce.

Methods: Among 1536 older adults (≥60 years) in the EPIC-Norfolk study, sedentary time was assessed for seven days at two time-points using accelerometers. We assessed associations of change in total and prolonged bouts of sedentary time (≥ 30 minutes) with change in demographic and behavioural factors using multi-level regression.

Results: Over follow-up (5.3±1.9 years), greater increases in total sedentary time were associated with older age, being male, higher rate of increase in BMI, lower rate of increase in gardening (0.5 min/day/yr greater sedentary time per hour/week/yr less gardening, 95% CI 0.1, 1.0), a lower rate of increase in walking (0.2 min/day/yr greater sedentary time per hour/week/yr less walking, 95% CI 0.1, 0.3) and a higher rate of increase in television viewing. Correlates of change in prolonged sedentary bouts were similar.

Conclusion: Individuals in specific sub-groups (older, male, higher BMI) and who differentially participate in certain behaviours (less gardening, less walking and more television viewing) but not others increase their sedentary time at a higher rate than others; utilising this information could inform successful intervention content and targeting.