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Bicycling to school improves the cardiometabolic risk factor profile: a randomised controlled trial
Lars Ostergaard1, Line A B Børrestad, Jakob Tarp
1Institute of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Objectives:
To investigate whether bicycling to school improves cardiometabolic risk factor profile and cardiorespiratory fitness among children.
Design:
Prospective, blinded, randomised controlled trial.
Setting:
Single centre study in Odense, Denmark
Participants:
43 children previously not bicycling to school were randomly allocated to control group (n=20) (ie, no change in lifestyle) or intervention group (ie, bicycling to school) (n=23).
Primary And Secondary Outcome Measures:
Change in cardiometabolic risk factor score and change in cardiorespiratory fitness.
Results:
All participants measured at baseline returned at follow-up. Based upon intention-to-treat (ITT) analyses, clustering of cardiometabolic risk factors was lowered by 0.58 SD (95% CI -1.03 to -0.14, p=0.012) in the bicycling group compared to the control group. Cardiorespiratory fitness (l O(2)/min) per se did not increase significantly more in the intervention than in the control group (β=0.0337, 95% CI -0.06 to 0.12, p=0.458).
Conclusions:
Bicycling to school counteracted a clustering of cardiometabolic risk factors and should thus be recognised as potential prevention of type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease (CVD). The intervention did, however, not elicit a larger increase in cardiorespiratory fitness in the intervention group as compared with the control group.
Trial Registration:
Registered at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01236222).
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