Association of longitudinal activity measures and diabetes risk: an analysis from the NIH All of Us Research Program.

AIMS
Prior studies of the relationship between physical activity and incident type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) relied primarily on questionnaires at a single time point. We sought to investigate the relationship between physical activity and incident T2DM with an innovative approach using data from commercial wearable devices linked to electronic health records in a real-world population.


METHODS
Using All of Us participants' accelerometer data from their personal Fitbit devices, we used a time-varying Cox proportional hazards models with repeated measures of physical activity for the outcome of incident T2DM. We evaluated for effect modification with age, sex, BMI, and sedentary time using multiplicative interaction terms.


RESULTS
From 5,677 participants in the All of Us Research Program (median age 51 years; 74% female; 89% White), there were 97 (2%) cases of incident T2DM over a median follow-up of 3.8 years between 2010-2021. In models adjusted for age, sex and race, the hazard of incident diabetes was reduced by 44% (95% CI 15-63%, P = 0.01) when comparing those with an average daily step count of 10,700 to those with 6,000. Similar benefits were seen comparing groups based on average duration of various intensities of activity (e.g., lightly active, fairly active, very active). There was no evidence for effect modification by age, sex, body mass index (BMI) or sedentary time.


CONCLUSIONS
Greater time in any type of physical activity intensity was associated with lower risk of T2DM irrespective of age, sex, BMI or sedentary time.