Age at puberty and accelerometer-measured physical activity: Findings from two independent UK cohorts

Abstract

Background

It is unclear if puberty timing influences future physical activity (PA).

Aim

To investigate the association of puberty timing with PA across adolescence and adulthood.

Subjects and methods

Data were from two British cohorts. Participants from an adolescent birth cohort (females = 2349, males = 1720) prospectively reported age at menarche and voice break and had PA recorded by Actigraph accelerometers at ages 14 years and 16 years. A cohort of middle-aged and older adults (40–70 years; females = 48,282; males = 36,112) recalled their age at puberty and had PA (mean acceleration; mg) measured by AxivityAX3 accelerometers.

Results

After adjustment for age, education, smoking and BMI, per 1-year older age at menarche was associated with higher mean counts/minute at age 14 years (0.07 SD counts/minute; 95% CI = 0.04–0.11) with associations attenuated at age 16 years (0.02; −0.03–0.07). Differences in mean acceleration per older year at menarche were close to the null in women aged 40–49 years (0.02 mg; 0.01–0.03), 50–59 years (0.01; 0.00–0.02) and 60–70 years (0.01; 0.00–0.01). Age at voice break and PA associations were close to the null in both cohorts.

Conclusion

We found a positive association between puberty timing and PA in females which weakened at older ages and limited evidence of an association at any age in males.

Keywords:

• ALSPAC
• life-course
• physical activity
• puberty
• UK Biobank

Author contributions

Study design: AE and DAL. Data acquisition: CLG, JHT, DAL. Data analysis plan: AE and DAL. Data analysis: AE, with supervision from DAL. Data interpretation: AE CLG, JHT and DAL. First draft of manuscript produced by AE. All authors contributed to development of the draft and read and approved its final version.

Acknowledgements

We are extremely grateful to the ALSPAC families who took part in this study, the midwives for their help in recruiting them and the whole ALSPAC team, which includes interviewers, computer and laboratory technicians, clerical workers, research scientists, volunteers, managers, receptionists and nurses. We also thank the UK Biobank participants for their contribution to the study. This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource under Application Number ‘17295’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 733206 [LifeCycle], which pays the salary of AE. AE and DAL work in a Unit that receives funds from the University of Bristol and UK Medical Research Council [MC_UU_00011/6]. DAL is a National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator [NF-SI-0611-10196]. DAL has received support from numerous national and international government and charity funders, as well as Medtronic Ltd and Roche Diagnostics for work unrelated to that presented here. CLG is funded by an Arthritis Research UK Clinician Scientist Fellowship [ref 20000]. The UK Medical Research Council and Wellcome [Grant ref: 102215/2/13/2] and the University of Bristol provide core support for ALSPAC. A comprehensive list of grants funding is available on the ALSPAC website [http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/external/documents/grant-acknowledgements.pdf]. The funders had no role in the study design or decision to submit it for publication. Views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily any funder. Dr Elhakeem will serve as guarantor for the content of this paper.