Correlations of non-exercise activity thermogenesis to metabolic parameters in Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is the energy expenditure due to physical activities besides active sports-like exercise and resistance training in daily life.

We studied 45 subjects (22 women and 23 men) with type 2 diabetes who did not take any hypoglycemic, anti-hypertensive, or cholesterol-lowering agents and asked them about physical activity concerned with NEAT using an original questionnaire modified from a compendium of physical activities. We studied the association of the NEAT score to body weight, waist circumference, blood pressure, glucose and lipid metabolism, and arterial stiffness.

The NEAT score was negatively correlated with serum insulin levels (r = -0.42, P < 0.05) in all subjects. The NEAT score was also negatively correlated with waist circumference (r = -0.509, P < 0.05) and positively correlated with high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol levels (r = 0.494, P < 0.05) in women, and negatively associated with serum insulin levels (r = -0.732, p < 0.005), systolic (r = -0.482, P < 0.05) and diastolic blood pressure (r = -0.538, P < 0.05) in patients with abdominal obesity. Furthermore, the NEAT score was negatively associated with pulse wave velocity (r = -0.719, P < 0.005) in smokers.

The study demonstrated that NEAT is associated with amelioration in insulin sensitivity, waist circumference, high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol, blood pressure and the marker for atherosclerosis in patients with type 2 diabetes.