Ethnic Differences in Sitting Behaviors ID'd in Older Women

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 19, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Overweight/obese postmenopausal women have ethnic differences in sitting behavior and in the deleterious association between sitting behavior and cardiometabolic risk, according to a study published in the Feb. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Ya-Ju Chang, Ph.D., from the University of California San Diego in La Jolla, and colleagues examined ethnic differences in sitting behavior and associations with cardiometabolic risk in 518 overweight/obese postmenopausal women. Sitting was compared between 102 Hispanic women and 416 non-Hispanic women, and the authors examined associations between sitting time and cardiometabolic risk biomarkers.

The researchers found that on average, Hispanic women sat for 50.3 minutes less/day than non-Hispanic women and had a shorter mean sitting bout duration (3.6 minutes less). There was a deleterious association for longer sitting time with fasting insulin and triglyceride concentrations, insulin resistance, body mass index, and waist circumference among all women; deleterious associations were also seen for longer mean sitting bout duration and fasting glucose and insulin concentrations, insulin resistance, body mass index, and waist circumference. In an exploratory interaction analysis, the investigators observed a significantly stronger association between mean sitting bout duration and fasting glucose concentration for Hispanic women compared with non-Hispanic women.

"Our results highlight ethnic differences in sitting behaviors and suggest that associations of sitting patterns and fasting glucose vary by ethnicity, with more deleterious associations observed for Hispanic women," the authors write.

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