The Nugget
- Cardiorespiratory fitness is a strong and consistent predictor of lower risk for all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality, cancer mortality, and incidence of chronic conditions like hypertension, heart failure, stroke, atrial fibrillation, dementia and depression across 26 meta-analyses representing over 20.9 million observations from 199 cohort studies.
Make it stick
- 🏃♂️ High cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a 47-53% lower risk of all-cause mortality compared to low fitness
- 💪 Each 1 MET higher level of cardiorespiratory fitness was linked to an 11-17% lower risk of all-cause mortality
- ❤️ High vs low cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a 69% lower risk of incident heart failure
Key insights
Cardiorespiratory fitness predicts mortality outcomes
- High vs low cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a 41-53% lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality, sudden cardiac death, all-cancer mortality and lung cancer mortality.
- Each 1-MET higher level of cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a 7-51% lower risk of these mortality outcomes.
- The certainty of evidence was very low to moderate, largely due to most studies only including males.
Cardiorespiratory fitness predicts incident chronic conditions
- High vs low cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a 37-69% lower risk of incident hypertension, heart failure, stroke, atrial fibrillation, dementia, chronic kidney disease, depression and type 2 diabetes.
- Each 1-MET higher level of cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a 3-18% lower risk of these incident conditions.
- The certainty of evidence was very low to low due to inconsistency and most studies including males.
Cardiorespiratory fitness predicts prognosis in chronic conditions
- Among those living with chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease, cancer, and pulmonary hypertension, high vs low cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a 19-73% lower risk of adverse outcomes like mortality.
- The certainty of evidence was very low to low due to risk of bias, indirectness and imprecision.
Key quotes
- "We found consistent evidence that high CRF is strongly associated with lower risk for a variety of mortality and incident chronic conditions in general and clinical populations."
- "Given the strength of the predictive utility of cardiorespiratory fitness across many health outcomes, cardiorespiratory fitness would be a valuable risk stratification tool in clinical practice."
This summary contains AI-generated information and may have important inaccuracies or omissions.