Accelerometer-Derived "Weekend Warrior" Physical Activity Pattern and Venous Thromboembolism Incidence and Mortality:...

Although weekend warrior (WW) physical activity may confer health benefits comparable with more evenly distributed activity, whether this pattern is associated with venous thromboembolism (VTE) incidence and death remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the associations of accelerometer-derived physical activity patterns with incident VTE and all-cause death in individuals with prevalent VTE.

In this prospective cohort study, we analyzed 92 392 participants free of VTE for incidence analysis and 3019 participants with prevalent VTE for mortality analysis. Physical activity was measured using wrist-worn accelerometers. Participants were classified as inactive (<150 min/wk of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity [MVPA]), regularly active (≥150 min/wk of MVPA with <50% of total MVPA accumulated over 1-2 days), or WW (≥150 min/wk of MVPA with ≥50% of total MVPA accumulated over 1-2 days). The primary outcome was incident VTE, analyzed using Cox models.

Over a median follow-up of 11.1 years, 1955 incident VTE cases were recorded. In comparison with the inactive group, the WW pattern lowered the risk of incident VTE (hazard ratio [HR], 0.813 [95% CI, 0.733-0.902]) and reduced all-cause death among those with preexisting VTE (HR, 0.567 [95% CI, 0.438-0.734]). When compared with the regularly active group, the inactive group showed an increased risk, whereas the WW pattern showed no statistically significant difference.

Our findings indicate that the WW pattern was associated with lower risks of incident VTE and all-cause death, with associations comparable with those observed for activity distributed more evenly across the week, suggesting that it may be a practical strategy for VTE prevention and management.