Article Text
Abstract
Objective To investigate associations of physical activity at age 11 years with chronic disabling fatigue (CDF) at ages 13 and 16 years.
Design Longitudinal birth cohort.
Setting South-West England.
Participants Adolescents enrolled in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
Outcomes and exposures We identified adolescents who had disabling fatigue of >6 months' duration without a known cause at ages 13 and 16 years. Total and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and sedentary time at age 11 years were measured by accelerometry over a 7-day period.
Results A total physical activity level 100 counts/min higher at age 11 years was associated with 25% lower odds of CDF at age 13 years (OR=0.75 (95% CI 0.59 to 0.95)), a 1% increase in the proportion of monitored time spent in moderate-to-vigorous activity was associated with 16% lower odds of CDF (OR=0.84 (95% CI 0.69 to 1.01)) and a 1-hour increase in sedentary time was associated with 35% higher odds of CDF (OR=1.35 (95% CI 1.02 to 1.79)). Disabling fatigue of only 3–5 months’ duration at age 13 years had weaker associations with physical activity, and CDF at age 16 years was not associated with physical activity at age 11 years.
Conclusions Children who had chronic disabling fatigue at age 13 years had lower levels of total and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and more sedentary time 2 years previously, but this association could be explained by reverse causation.
- ALSPAC
- chronic fatigue syndrome
- adolescent health
- physical activity
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors SMC and TN analysed the data, wrote the first draft, revised the manuscript and approved the final version. KCD provided methodological input, analysed the data, revised the manuscript and approved the final version. RJ and ARN provided methodological input, interpreted the results, revised the manuscript and approved the final version. EC conceived the study, interpreted the results, revised the manuscript and approved the final version.
Funding This research was specifically funded by the UK MRC (Grant ref: MR/K020269/1). SMC, TN and EC were funded by an MRC research grant (MR/K020269/1); EC is also funded by an NIHR Senior Research Fellowship (SRF820138068013).
Competing interests EC is a medical advisor for the Sussex & Kent ME/CFS Society. The other authors have indicated no potential conflicts of interest to declare.
Ethics approval Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the ALSPAC Ethics and Law Committee (IRB00003312) and the Local Research Ethics Committees.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement The ALSPAC study website contains details of all the data that are available through a fully searchable data dictionary (www.bris.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/data-access/data-dictionary/).