Concentrated weekend workouts just as beneficial in hypertension

Engaging in guideline-recommended moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for patients with hypertension helps reduce the risk of death, whether MVPA is distributed throughout the week or concentrated within 1–2 days during the weekend, as reported in a study.

Researchers used data from the UK Biobank and identified 52,838 hypertensive participants with accelerometer data. Weekly MVPA amounts and distribution were classified as active weekend warrior, active regular, and inactive.

Over a median follow-up of 7.5 years, there were 2,636 all-cause mortality, 161 stroke mortality, 875 stroke, and 716 ischaemic stroke events documented.

Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models showed that the risk of all-cause mortality was around 30-percent lower in both the active weekend warrior (hazard ratio [HR], 0.70, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.64–0.77; p<0.0001) and active regular groups (HR, 0.73, 95 percent CI, 0.65–0.82; p<0.0001) relative to the inactive group.

Both active MVPA groups showed nonsignificant risk reduction trends for stroke mortality (weekend warrior: HR, 0.85, 95 percent CI, 0.59–1.22; regular: HR, 0.87, 95 percent CI, 0.55–1.38), stroke (weekend warrior: HR, 0.86, 95 percent CI, 0.73–1.00; regular: HR, 0.91, 95 percent CI, 0.75–1.10), and ischaemic stroke (weekend warrior: HR, 0.83, 95 percent CI, 0.70–0.99; regular: HR, 0.87, 95 percent CI, 0.70–1.08).