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Sedentary behaviour and life expectancy in the USA: a cause-deleted life table analysis

July 13, 2012

Sedentary behaviour and life expectancy in the USA: a cause-deleted life table analysis

Source: British Medical Journal (open)

Objectives

To determine the impact of sitting and television viewing on life expectancy in the USA.

Design

Prevalence-based cause-deleted life table analysis.

Setting

Summary RRs of all-cause mortality associated with sitting and television viewing were obtained from a meta-analysis of available prospective cohort studies. Prevalences of sitting and television viewing were obtained from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Primary outcome measure

Life expectancy at birth.

Results

The estimated gains in life expectancy in the US population were 2.00 years for reducing excessive sitting to <3 h/day and a gain of 1.38 years from reducing excessive television viewing to <2 h/day. The lower and upper limits from a sensitivity analysis that involved simultaneously varying the estimates of RR (using the upper and lower bounds of the 95% CI) and the prevalence of television viewing (±20%) were 1.39 and 2.69 years for sitting and 0.48 and 2.51 years for television viewing, respectively.

Conclusion

Reducing sedentary behaviours such as sitting and television viewing may have the potential to increase life expectancy in the USA.

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