Impact of the Home Confinement Related to COVID-19 on the Device-Assessed Physical Activity and Sedentary Patterns of Spanish Older Adults

  1. Ángel I. Fernández-García
  2. Jorge Marin-Puyalto
  3. Alba Gómez-Cabello
  4. Ángel Matute-Llorente
  5. Jorge Subías-Perié
  6. Jorge Pérez-Gómez
  7. Gabriel Lozano-Berges
  8. Asier Mañas
  9. Amelia Guadalupe-Grau
  10. Marcela González-Gross
  11. Ignacio Ara
  12. José A. Casajús
  13. Germán Vicente-Rodríguez

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Abstract

The main objective of this study was to device-assess the levels of physical activity and sedentary behaviour patterns of older adults during the situation prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, home confinement, and phase-0 of the deescalation. We also aimed to analyse the effectiveness of an unsupervised home-based exercise routine to counteract the potential increase in sedentary behaviour during the periods within the pandemic. A total of 18 noninstitutionalized older adults( 78.4 ± 6.0  y.), members of the Spanish cohort of the EXERNET-Elder 3.0 project, participated in the study. They were recommended to perform an exercise prescription based on resistance, balance, and aerobic exercises during the pandemic. Wrist triaxial accelerometers (ActiGraph GT9X) were used to assess the percentage of sedentary time, physical activity, sedentary bouts and breaks of sedentary time. An ANOVA for repeated measures was performed to analyse the differences between the three different periods. During home quarantine, older adults spent more time in sedentary behaviours ( 71.6 ± 5.3 % ) in comparison with either the situation prior to the pandemic ( 65.5 ± 6.7 % ) or the ending of isolation ( 67.7 ± 7.1 % ) (all p < 0.05 ). Moreover, participants performed less bouts of physical activity and with a shorter duration during home quarantine (both p < 0.05 ). Additionally, no differences in the physical activity behaviours were found between the situation prior to the pandemic and the phase-0 of deescalation. According to our results, the home confinement could negatively affect health due to increased sedentary lifestyle and the reduction of physical activity. Therefore, our unsupervised exercise program does not seem to be a completely effective strategy at least in this period.

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  1. Version published to 10.1155/2021/5528866
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.19.20234583: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The protocol of the EXERNET-Elder 3.0 study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of Clinical Research from the Alcorcón Foundation University Hospital (16/50), additionally the Research Ethics Committee of the Autonomous Community of Aragon approved the specific study during the home-quarantine (nº 10/2020).
    Consent: All who voluntarily agreed to participate signed an informed consent.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    PA and SB were evaluated with an ActiGraph GT9X triaxial accelerometer (ActiGraph GT9X Link; Actigraph, 49 E.
    ActiGraph
    suggested: (ActiGraph Activity Monitor Devices, RRID:SCR_008399)
    All the analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software (SPSS, v. 25.0 for WINDOWS; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA), and values of p<0.05 were considered statistically significant.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    4.4 Strengths and limitations of this study: The current research is highly topical and relevant, since we have not yet defeated the pandemic. Quarantines and confinements are repeated in Spain and different parts of the world. To our knowledge, this is the first study that device-assessed the impact of home-confinement caused by COVID-19 in PA and SB patterns of older adults, while undergoing an unsupervised exercise intervention. Nevertheless, some limitations of our study should be mentioned. Firstly, the small sample size limits the generalisation of the results and our findings should be interpreted considering the absence of a control group for ethical reasons. Secondly, although the attendance was registered, the level of compliance of exercise prescription could not be recorded because it was an unsupervised training. And thirdly, participants wore the accelerometer fewer days during the periods evaluated within the pandemic, although it is probable that, due to the restrictions imposed, daily routines were similar and there would be no differences between weekdays and weekends, as previous studies have shown in this population in a usual life situation[39]. Moreover, specific cut points for light, moderate and vigorous PA have not yet been defined for this population and body location for ActiGraph accelerometers, so given the importance of a deeper understanding of the PA patterns in healthy aging, future research effort should be made in this direction.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT03831841CompletedPhysical Fitness, Body Composition and Frailty in Elderly Pe…

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.19.20234583v1 on medRxiv