1. Walking Compared with Vigorous Exercise for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Events in Women
- Author
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Manson, JoAnn E, Greenland, Philip, LaCroix, Andrea Z, Stefanick, Marcia L, Mouton, Charles P, Oberman, Albert, Perri, Michael G, Sheps, David S, Pettinger, Mary B, and Siscovick, David S
- Subjects
Heart Disease ,Clinical Research ,Aging ,Prevention ,Cardiovascular ,Cancer ,Good Health and Well Being ,Aged ,Cardiovascular Diseases ,Coronary Disease ,Exercise ,Female ,Humans ,Middle Aged ,Multivariate Analysis ,Postmenopause ,Proportional Hazards Models ,Prospective Studies ,Reproducibility of Results ,Risk ,Surveys and Questionnaires ,Walking ,Medical and Health Sciences ,General & Internal Medicine - Abstract
BackgroundThe role of walking, as compared with vigorous exercise, in the prevention of cardiovascular disease remains controversial. Data for women who are members of minority racial or ethnic groups are particularly sparse.MethodsWe prospectively examined the total physical-activity score, walking, vigorous exercise, and hours spent sitting as predictors of the incidence of coronary events and total cardiovascular events among 73,743 postmenopausal women 50 to 79 years of age in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study. At base line, participants were free of diagnosed cardiovascular disease and cancer, and all participants completed detailed questionnaires about physical activity. We documented 345 newly diagnosed cases of coronary heart disease and 1551 total cardiovascular events.ResultsAn increasing physical-activity score had a strong, graded, inverse association with the risk of both coronary events and total cardiovascular events. There were similar findings among white women and black women. Women in increasing quintiles of energy expenditure measured in metabolic equivalents (the MET score) had age-adjusted relative risks of coronary events of 1.00, 0.73, 0.69, 0.68, and 0.47, respectively (P for trend,
- Published
- 2002