Is long-bout sedentary behaviour associated with long-term glucose levels 3 months after acute ischaemic stroke? A prospective observational cohort study

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Sedentary behaviour is a risk factor for vascular disease and stroke patients are more sedentary than their age-matched peers. The association with glucose levels, as a potential mediator, is unclear, and we have investigated the association between long-bout sedentary behaviour and long-term glucose levels in stroke survivors. METHODS: This study uses data from the Norwegian Cognitive Impairment After Stroke study, a multicentre cohort study. The patients were recruited at hospital admission for acute stroke, and the follow-up was done at the outpatient clinic. Sedentary behaviour—being in a sitting or reclining position—was registered 3 months after stroke using position transition data from the body-worn sensor activPAL attached to the unaffected thigh. A MATLAB script was developed to extract activity data from 08:00 to 10:00 for 4 days and to categorise the data into four bout-length categories. The primary outcome was glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), analysed at 3 months. Regression models were used to analyse the association between HbA1c and sedentary behaviour in the whole population and stratified based on a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus (DM). Age, body mass index and the use of antidiabetic drugs were added as covariates into the models. RESULTS: From a total of 815 included patients, 379 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria for this study. We found no association between time in sedentary behaviour and HbA1c in the whole stroke population. We found time in sedentary behaviour in bouts of ≥90 min to be associated with a higher HbA1c in patients with DM. CONCLUSION: Long-bout sedentary time is associated with a higher HbA1c in patients with DM 3 months after ischaemic stroke. Future research should investigate the benefit of breaking up sedentary time as a secondary preventive measure. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02650531, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02650531