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Estimation of daily inhalation rate in preschool children using a tri-axial accelerometer: a pilot study

Junko Kawahara1, Shigeho Tanaka, Chiaki Tanaka

  • 1Research Center for Environmental Risks, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan. jkawa@nies.go.jp

The Science of the Total Environment
|June 14, 2011
PubMed

Insights

Monitoring children's physical activity with accelerometers requires including weekend days for accurate daily inhalation rate estimates. Three days of data, including a weekend, offer reliable inhalation rates but less reliable activity level breakdowns.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Exercise Science
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Environmental Health

Background:

  • Accurate measurement of physical activity and associated physiological responses in children is crucial for understanding health.
  • Accelerometers are widely used to estimate physical activity levels and energy expenditure.
  • Previous studies have focused on weekday activity, potentially overlooking weekend variations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To assess the reliability of accelerometer-based estimates of daily inhalation rate and physical activity levels in young children.
  • To determine the impact of including a weekend day in monitoring on data reliability.
  • To investigate differences in daily inhalation rate and activity patterns between weekdays and weekend days.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized ActivTracer tri-axial accelerometers to monitor 5- to 6-year-old Japanese children (n=29) for 3 consecutive days.
  • Estimated daily inhalation rate and time spent in sedentary, light, or moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) using established regression equations.
  • Analyzed between-day reliability using intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) for both inhalation rate and activity durations.

Main Results:

  • A 3-day monitoring period, including a weekend, yielded acceptable reliability for daily inhalation rate (ICC=0.892).
  • Reliability for time spent in different activity levels (sedentary, light, MVPA) was low to moderate (ICC=0.43 to 0.58).
  • Significant differences in daily inhalation rate were observed between weekdays and weekend days, linked to variations in MVPA.

Conclusions:

  • Including a weekend day in accelerometer monitoring enhances the reliability of daily inhalation rate estimations in children.
  • A 3-day monitoring protocol, encompassing a weekend, is recommended for more robust daily inhalation rate assessments.
  • Further investigation may be needed to improve the reliability of accelerometer-derived activity level data over short monitoring periods.

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