The association between total volume and intensity of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and incidence of osteoporosis

Abstract

It is unclear whether moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and its proportion by vigorous physical activities (VPA) would decrease the risk of osteoporosis. This study aimed to examine a dose-response association between MVPA, VPA ratio, and incident osteoporosis in a large prospective cohort. We conducted a longitudinal analysis using data on MVPA, VPA, and osteoporosis from the UK Biobank prospective cohort study. A total of 368,553 eligible participants were included at baseline. Cox proportional hazard models were used to explore the association of MVPA and VPA with the incidence of osteoporosis for men and women, and trend tests were applied to assess the dose-response relationship between them. During a median follow-up of 12.56 years, 11,788 incident cases of osteoporosis (2016 in men and 9772 in women) were identified. The multivariate-adjusted HR (95%CI) of osteoporosis in the highest compared with lowest quartile of MVPA was 0.61 (0.54–0.69); P-trend < 0.001 for men and 0.84 (0.79–0.89); P-trend < 0.001 for women. In the analyses of proportions of VPA and the risk of osteoporosis, the highest tertile of VPA proportion was associated with the lowest risk of osteoporosis with a HR (95%CI) of 0.74 (0.63–0.86); P-trend < 0.001 for men and 0.80 (0.75–0.86); P-trend < 0.001 for women. A higher MVPA and VPA proportion were associated with decreasing osteoporosis risk in a dose-response manner, respectively, among British aged between 37 and 73 years.