Diet, physical activity help lower cardiometabolic disease risk

Behavioural weight-loss interventions, such as diet alone and diet plus physical activity (PA), induce a beneficial change in biomarkers of insulin resistance and cardiometabolic health in adults with overweight or obesity, reports a study. However, no additional benefit has been observed with the addition of moderate-intensity PA to a diet-only intervention.

Participants who underwent diet alone or diet plus PA all had significant improvements in body weight (p<0.0001), Lipoprotein Insulin Resistance Index score (p<0.0001), Diabetes Risk Index score (p<0.0001), branched-chain amino acid concentration (p<0.0001), and GlycA concentration (p<0.0001). No group effect or group by time interactions were seen.

“These findings highlight that an average weight loss of approximately 10 percent profoundly impacts biomarkers of insulin resistance and cardiometabolic disease in adults with overweight or obesity,” the researchers said.

The study sought to determine whether novel biomarkers of cardiometabolic health improve in response to a 12-month behavioural weight-loss intervention and to compare the benefits of diet alone with diet plus PA for the said biomarkers.

The researchers randomly assigned 374 participants to diet alone, diet plus 150 min/wk of prescribed moderate-intensity PA, or diet plus 250 min/wk of prescribed moderate-intensity PA. They used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to determine biomarker concentrations. Finally, mixed models were used to examine time effect, group effect, or group by time interaction.