502 - Device-Measured Physical Activity in Adolescents and Adults Born Preterm – The Norwegian HUNT Study

Poster Number: 502
Publication Number: 502.1421

Background: Physical activity (PA) is beneficial for physical and mental health outcomes, and individuals born preterm ( < 37 weeks of gestation) are at higher risk of cardiometabolic deficits compared with controls. Few published studies have measured PA using accelerometers among adults born early preterm and very low birth weight, and they found no difference compared with term-born controls. However, it is unclear whether these findings are present in population-based cohort studies including a wide range of gestational ages.

Objective: To examine whether preterm birth is associated with time spent in different PA categories among adolescents and adults.

Design/Methods: Adolescents and adults from the Norwegian HUNT Study, a population-based cohort study in Trøndelag County (Norway) in 2017-2019 were linked to the Norwegian Medical Birth Registry. The participants were categorized into groups based on completed weeks of gestation at birth: very preterm ( < 32 weeks), moderately preterm (32-33 weeks), late preterm (34-36 weeks), early preterm (37-38 weeks), full term (39-40 weeks), late term (41 weeks) and post term (≥ 42 weeks). A total of 13 055 participants (13-52 years of age) with physical activity assessed by two tri-axial accelerometers for seven days were included. Daily metabolic equivalent of task (MET) minutes in PA categories of sedentary (lying, sitting), light PA (standing, slow walking) and moderate to vigorous PA (moderate walking, brisk walking, running, cycling) were analyzed using linear regression, adjusted for age and sex. Due to some deviations from normality, we used bootstrapping with B=2000 bootstrap samples and the bias-corrected and accelerated method. A significance level of 0.05 was used.

Results: Background characteristics are presented in Table 1, and daily minutes in different PA behaviors are shown in Figure 1. Unadjusted mean (SD) in daily MET minutes in PA categories for the different gestational age groups are presented in Table 2. Adjusted for age and sex, there was no overall association between gestational age group and sedentary (p=0.165), light (p=0.186), or moderate to vigorous PA (p=0.324).

Conclusion(s): In this large population-based study of adolescents and adults, we found that time spent in different PA categories did not differ according to gestational age group.