Associations among metabolic health, weight status, and various physical fitness components in Japanese adolescents: a cross-sectional study (NICE EVIDENCE study- Agano 3)

ABSTRACT

Aim was to examine associations among metabolic health, weight status, and various physical fitness (PF) components in 1744 Japanese adolescents aged 13–14. Anthropometric measurements and PF tests (20 m shuttle run test [20mSRT], handgrip strength/body mass [HG], standing long jump [SLJ], and sit ups [SU]) were administered. The bottom sex-specific quintile of PF indicated “low fit”. Participants were classified as non-overweight (non-OW) or overweight/obese (OW) according to the International Obesity Task Force. Clustered metabolic risk was defined as the sum of Z scores for mean arterial pressure, non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and HbA1c, divided by three, and ≥ 1 SD. Combination of weight status and scores for HG or SU were additively associated with clustered metabolic risk. Compared with the non-OW-moderate-high fit group, the OW-low HG group was 3.05 (95%CI: 1.88–4.97) times more likely to have clustered metabolic risk although risk was not significantly elevated in the OW-moderate-high HG group (1.52 [95%CI: 0.88–2.62]). A similar association was observed between OW and low SU scores but not between OW and low 20mSRT or SLJ scores. Adolescents with OW and moderate-high HG or SU scores had a lower prevalence of an unfavourable metabolic state than those with OW and low HG or SU results.

KEYWORDS:

• Overweight
• physical fitness
• clustered metabolic risk

Abbreviations

BMI	=	body mass index
BP	=	blood pressure
CRF	=	cardiorespiratory fitness
DBP	=	diastolic blood pressure
HDL-C	=	high-density lipoprotein cholesterol
HG	=	body mass normalized handgrip strength
MAP	=	mean arterial pressure
MF	=	muscular fitness
MH	=	metabolically healthy
MU	=	metabolically unhealthy;
non-HDL-C	=	non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol
non-OW	=	non-overweight
OR	=	odds ratio
OW	=	overweight/obese
PF	=	physical fitness
SD	=	standard deviation
SBP	=	systolic blood pressure
SLJ	=	standing long jump test
SU	=	sit up test
TC	=	total cholesterol
Z-CMR	=	clustered metabolic risk score;
20mSRT	=	20 m multistage shuttle run test; 95%CI, 95% confidence interval

Acknowledgments

All authors thank all participating students, as well as their parents and educators, for their collaboration and the staff at Agano City for their support in data preparation. We also thank Ms. Sakiko Sato for her excellent technical work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Human Subjects Approval Statement

This study was approved by the ethics committee of the Niigata University faculty of medicine institutional review board [No. 1864] and adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki and the Japanese Government’s Ethical Guidelines for Medical and Health Research Involving Human Subjects. Written informed consent was obtained from both participants and parents prior to involving students in this research.

Author contributors

SYM contributed to the study concept and design, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript, and statistical analysis. YT, II, MH, and CH contributed to acquisition of data, drafting and critical revision of the manuscript, and technical or material support. KF contributed to the study concept and design, acquisition of data, statistical analysis, interpretation of data, and study supervision. AK, YM, HI, and TY contributed to the acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data, and drafting and critical revision of the manuscript. YO contributed to the interpretation of data and drafting the manuscript. HS supervised the study and revised the draft critically for important intellectual content. All authors contributed to the interpretation and review of the manuscript. All authors approved the manuscript.

Data availability statement

We are unable to provide an anonymized data set containing our underlying data used to create the figures and tables because these data are private property of Agano city. Making it available to anyone in the general public would cause loss of ownership of the data by Agano city.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2023.2268358.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (#18K17948 for Morikawa,# 21K11569 for Fujihara, and # 19H04028 for Sone). The sponsors had no influence over the design and conduct of the study; management, collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.