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Increasing physical education in high school students: effects on concentration of circulating endothelial progenitor cells
Walther et al.
European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation 2008
Childhood obesity is the result of an accelerating process which started in the affluent western societies decades ago, but meanwhile in frequently present in multiple societies. Childhood obesity is predictive of adult obesity and is associated with several cardiovascular risk factors like hypertension, hyperlipidemia, hyperinsulinaemia, diabetes and other chronic diseases including early atherosclerosis. Inevitably clinical manifestations of cardiovascular disease will follow in the majority of obese children once they enter adulthood, but starts already in children with ages of 5 years. Although many factors contribute to this syndrome, the most important single cause seems to be the increase of sedentary behaviour and concomitant decline of physical activity during the past decades.
Environmental changes are urgently required and children usually are still open minded to adopt a change in lifestyle. Therefore children may be the ideal target population to implement more active lifestyle. The hypothesis of this study is based on the assumption that an early adaptation to regular physical activity may result in a long-lasting modification of the personality trait towards an active life-style at least in part of the children. Therefore school physical education seems to be a key opportunity to promote active lifestyles.
During the last years many school-based intervention programs promoting physical fitness have been evaluated. However, results of these studies are inconclusive and often disappointing. Reasons for this may be methodological limitations like non randomized studies, non-objective measurements, an insufficient amount of physical activity provided and an incomplete evaluation of the cardiovascular risk factors. In contrast to many other programs we compared the effect of daily school exercise lessons to the effect of 2 exercise lessons / week - what is usual in Germany. Besides analysing the impact of this "simple" program on physical activity, physical fitness, and motor abilities, we additionally investigated the amount and function of circulating endothelial progenitor cells, which are markers for the overall cardiovascular risk.
The feasibility, demonstrated by this study, of inducing improvements in physical fitness and motor abilities and cardiovascular risk markers is important for teachers and physicians. These findings should help to encourage the development of physical education programs that are effective in providing children with substantial amounts of physical activity.
