The main aim of the INTEGRActiv study is to identify useful new integrative biomarkers of physical activity (PA) and its effects on body health in children and adolescents, who represent an important target population for addressing personalized interventions to improve future metabolic health.
Physical activity (PA) provides lifelong health benefits and improves many established cardiovascular risk factors that have a significant impact on overall mortality. However, discrepancies between self-reported and device-based measures of PA make it difficult to obtain consistent results regarding PA and its health effects. Furthermore, PA can produce different health effects depending on the type, intensity, duration and frequency of activities and individual factors such as age, gender, body weight, early life conditions/exposures, etc. Appropriate biomarkers linking the degree of PA level to its health effects, particularly in children and adolescents, are needed and absent.
The main objective of the INTEGRActiv study is to identify useful new integrative biomarkers of PA and its effects on body health in children and adolescents, who represent an important target population for addressing personalized interventions to improve future metabolic health. The study is structured in two phases.
First, biomarkers of PA and health will be identified at baseline in a core cohort of 180 volunteers, divided into two age groups: prepubertal adolescents (n = 90) and postpubertal adolescents (n = 90). Each group will comprise three subgroups (n = 30) with normal-weight, overweight and obese subjects, respectively. The identification of new biomarkers will be achieved by combining physical (PA and cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, anthropometry) and molecular measurements (cardiovascular risk factors, endocrine markers, circulating cytokines and miRNAs in plasma, gene expression profiling in blood cells and metabolomic profiling in plasma).
In the second phase, an educational intervention and its follow-up will be carried out in a subgroup of these subjects (60 volunteers), as a first step in validating the biomarkers identified. The INTEGRActiv study should provide the definition of PA and health-related biomarkers (PA-health biomarkers) in childhood and adolescence. It will enable us to relate biomarkers to factors such as age, gender, body weight, sleep behavior, dietary factors and pubertal status, and identify how these factors quantitatively affect biomarker responses.
Overall, the INTEGRActiv study approach should help monitor the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving the quality of life of children/adolescents through physical activity.