Systematic review of the relationships between objectively measured physical activity and health indicators in school-aged children and youth.

By V. Poitras, C. Gray, M. Borghese, V. Carson, J. Chaput, Ian Janssen, P. Katzmarzyk, Russell R. Pate, S. Connor Gorber, M. Kho and 2 more. Applied physiology, nutrition, and metabolism = Physiologie appliquee, nutrition et metabolisme, 2016

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Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) is essential for disease prevention and health promotion. Emerging evidence suggests other intensities of physical activity (PA), including light-intensity activity (LPA), may also be important, but there has been no rigorous evaluation of the evidence. The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the relationships between objectively measured PA (total and all intensities) and health indicators in school-aged children and youth. Online databases were searched for peer-reviewed studies that met the a priori inclusion criteria: population (apparently healthy, aged 5-17 years), intervention/exposure/comparator (volumes, durations, frequencies, intensities, and patterns of objectively measured PA), and outcome (body composition, cardiometabolic biomarkers, physical fitness, behavioural conduct/pro-social behaviour, cognition/academic achievement, quality of life/well-being, harms, bone health, motor skill development, psychological distress, self-esteem). Heterogeneity among studies precluded meta-analyses; narrative synthesis was conducted. A total of 162 studies were included (204 171 participants from 31 countries). Overall, total PA was favourably associated with physical, psychological/social, and cognitive health indicators. Relationships were more consistent and robust for higher (e.g., MVPA) versus lower (e.g., LPA) intensity PA. All patterns of activity (sporadic, bouts, continuous) provided benefit. LPA was favourably associated with cardiometabolic biomarkers; data were scarce for other outcomes. These findings continue to support the importance of at least 60 min/day of MVPA for disease prevention and health promotion in children and youth, but also highlight the potential benefits of LPA and total PA. All intensities of PA should be considered in future work aimed at better elucidating the health benefits of PA in children and youth.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Physiology, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5a9e75ec2af62922d1bb992adfb4cc875770efd1

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Embodied learning in the classroom: Effects on primary school children’s attention and foreign language vocabulary learning (2019, background): “for children’s physical (Poitras et al., 2016) and mental health (Lubans et al.”
Systematic review of the relationships between physical activity and health indicators in the early years (0-4 years) (2017, background): “Setting minimum sample size inclusion criteria a priori is consistent with a similar systematic review in school-aged children and youth [2]; however, more lenient cut-offs were chosen a priori in the present review because it was anticipated the volume of research was lower in the early years age g”
2020 WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour for children and adolescents aged 5–17 years: summary of the evidence (2020, methodology): “For both physical activity and sedentary behaviour, the summary of evidence below refers to the overall body of evidence from existing [16, 18, 19, 21] and the 21 new systematic reviews.”
World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour (2020, methodology): “For these guidelines on children and adolescents, systematic reviews undertaken by Poitras et al , 8 Carson et al 9 and Okely et al 10 were used and updated.”