ORIGINAL ARTICLE  EPIDEMIOLOGY AND CLINICAL MEDICINE 

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2022 November;62(11):1526-33

DOI: 10.23736/S0022-4707.21.13234-7

Copyright © 2021 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Association between cardiorespiratory fitness and metabolic health in overweight and obese adults

Eero A. HAAPALA ^{1, 2} ✉, Tanja SJÖROS ³, Saara LAINE ³, Taru GARTHWAITE ³, Petri KALLIO ⁴, Maria SAARENHOVI ⁴, Henri VÄHÄ-YPYÄ ⁵, Eliisa LÖYTTYNIEMI ⁶, Harri SIEVÄNEN ⁵, Noora HOUTTU ⁷, Kirsi LAITINEN ⁷, Kari KALLIOKOSKI ³, Juhani KNUUTI ³, Tommi VASANKARI ^{4, 8}, Ilkka H. HEINONEN ^{3, 9}

¹ Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland; ² School of Medicine, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland; ³ Turku PET Center, Turku University Hospital, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; ⁴ Department of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine, Turku University Hospital, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; ⁵ The UKK Institute for Health Promotion Research, Tampere, Finland; ⁶ Department of Biostatistics, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; ⁷ Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; ⁸ Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland; ⁹ Rydberg Laboratory of Applied Sciences, University of Halmstad, Halmstad, Sweden

BACKGROUND: Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) has been inversely associated with insulin resistance and clustering of cardiometabolic risk factors among overweight and obese individuals. However, most previous studies have scaled CRF by body mass (BM) possibly inflating the association between CRF and cardiometabolic health. We investigated the associations of peak oxygen uptake (V̇O2peak) and peak power output (Wpeak) scaled either by BM^-1, fat free mass (FFM^-1), or by allometric methods with individual cardiometabolic risk factors and clustering of cardiometabolic risk factors in 55 overweight or obese adults with metabolic syndrome.
METHODS: V̇O2peak and Wpeak were assessed by a maximal cycle ergometer exercise test. FFM was measured by air displacement plethysmograph and glucose, insulin, HbA1c, triglycerides, and total, LDL, and HDL cholesterol from fasting blood samples. HOMA-IR and metabolic syndrome score (MetS) were computed.
RESULTS: V̇O2peak and Wpeak scaled by BM^-1 were inversely associated with insulin (β=-0.404 to -0.372, 95% CI: -0.704 to -0.048), HOMA-IR (β=-0.442 to -0.440, 95% CI: -0.762 to -0.117), and MetS (β=-0.474 to -0.463, 95% CI: -0.798 to -0.127). Other measures of CRF were not associated with cardiometabolic risk factors.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that using BM^-1 as a scaling factor confounds the associations between CRF and cardiometabolic risk in overweight/obese adults with the metabolic syndrome.

KEY WORDS: Physical fitness; Metabolic syndrome; Insulin resistance