Validation of Objectively and Subjectively Measured Physical Activity Against Energy Expenditure in Older Adults

Summary

Physical inactivity is identified as one of the most important modifiable risk factors for chronic diseases, functional loss and disability and reliable assessment tools of physical activity are crucial in both research and clinical settings.

Traditionally, physical activity and sedentary behavior have been primarily assessed with questionnaires. Recently, accelerometers have been widely used to measure physical activity, sedentary behavior and sleep patterns in ageing. Still, the diversity of brands and models, various assessment protocols (e.g. anatomic locations, sampling frequency), data processing and outcome measures have posed challenges to the interpretation and comparability of results across studies. Therefore, despite some limitations, questionnaires are still considered an important assessment method, especially in large-scale studies. In order to bridge the differences in the interpretation of data from questionnaires to accelerometers among older adults, there is a need to validate existing physical activity and sedentary behavior questionnaires with energy expenditure in this population.

Energy expenditure has been used to "translate" accelerometer output into physiological outcomes. Nevertheless, several issues remain unresolved, including (1) limited calibration studies focusing on older adults; (2) resting metabolic rate and maximum physiological capacity typically decrease with aging, which makes daily activities "more intense" for an older person compared to a younger person; and (3) the same accelerometer metric measured at different body positions may be linked to completely different physiological outcomes.

Such diverse physiological impact according to the anatomical placement of accelerometers requires a rigorous harmonization of metrics from the accelerometers with energy expenditure during representative activities at different intensities.

The aims of this methodological study focusing on 80+ year-olds are to:

1. develop cut-points from accelerometers at different anatomical positions for different intensities of physical activity based on energy expenditure during semi-standardized daily tasks in the lab.
2. validate accelerometer at different anatomical positions against energy expenditure measured by double-labelled water (DLW) in free-living conditions.
3. validate existing physical activity and sedentary behavior questionnaires against DLW in free-living conditions.

Conditions

• no Condition, Community-dwelling 80+ Older Adults

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Odense University Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• National Institutes of Health (NIH)

  collaborator NIH

• Maastricht University

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Wisconsin, Madison

  collaborator OTHER

• University of California, Berkeley

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Ulster

  collaborator OTHER

• University Ramon Llull

  collaborator OTHER

• National Cancer Institute (NCI)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Southern Denmark

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Paolo Caserotti, PhD · Department of Sports and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark

Eligibility

Min Age

80 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-03-15

Primary Completion

2022-03-31

Completion

2022-03-31

Countries

• Denmark

Study Locations