Author(s)

Mayenne Rodrigues Oliveira¹, Ivelise F. A. F. da Costa², Camilla Ribeiro Lima de Farias², Mônica Oliveira da Silva Simões³, Carla Campos Muniz Medeiros⁴, Danielle Franklin de Carvalho⁴

¹Department of Nursing, State University of Paraiba, Campina Grande, Brazil.
²Graduate Program in Public Health, Centre for Epidemiological Research, State University of Paraiba, Campina Grande, Brazil.
³Department of Pharmacy, Graduate Program in Public Health, Centre for Epidemiological Research, State University of Paraiba, Campina Grande, Brazil.
⁴Department of Nursing, Graduate Program in Public Health, Centre for Epidemiological Research, State University of Paraiba, Campina Grande, Brazil.

In order to assess the prevalence of physical activity (PA) and its relationship with lipid profile among adolescents, a cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach was conducted with 102 adolescents aged 15 to 19 years from public schools of Campina Grande, Paraiba, Brazil. The following variables were analyzed: age, gender, ethnicity, maternal education, socioeconomic status, nutritional status, the practice of PA and lipid profile. The variables were obtained through validated form, anthropometry (weight and height) and blood collection by contract laboratory. Double entry and SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 22.0 were performed. First, a descriptive analysis of all variables was conducted, as well as measures of central tendency and dispersion for continuous variables. Accordingly, distribution was tested for normality using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. According to results, correlation was evaluated by Pearson/Spearman tests. Significance level of 5% was adopted for all analyses. The study was approved by the Ethics Approach Committee (EAC) of the State University of Paraíba. The most prevalent sex in the sample was female and regarding maternal education, 35.4% had complete high school. Regarding serum lipoproteins, 16% showed elevated total cholesterol and HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) 66% below the desired value. With regard to physical activity, 60.8% had insufficient PA levels. The sample showed changes in lipid profile and insufficiently active life style, besides having overpowered the eutrophic nutritional status. No statistically significant correlations between variables of the lipid profile and the time of PA were observed. These findings highlight the importance of physical exercise for maintaining health and suggest studies with larger populations in order to check the scientific literature regarding this topic.

Adolescents, Motor Activity, Cholesterol-HDL, Dyslipidemias

Oliveira, M. , Costa, I. , Farias, C. , Simões, M. , Medeiros, C. and Carvalho, D. (2014) Practice of Physical Activity and Its Relationship with Lipid Profile of Adolescents. Health, 6, 2356-2363. doi: 10.4236/health.2014.617271.