Sedentary Time as a Mediator Linking Cardiovascular Disease to Depression: NHANES Evidence for Public Health Intervention

Abstract

Both cardiovascular disease (CVD) and depression are linked to sitting time (ST). However, there is still no research on association among them. We aimed to use a large sample (n=11,667) from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to disentangle the relationship. We found participants experienced depression with CVD had more sitting time compared to those with single depression or CVD. Depression was positively associated with CVD, ST (OR:4.56, 95% CI:1.47-2.02, P＜0.001; OR:1.05, 95% CI:1.04-1.07, P＜0.001). Besides, ST was associated with CVD (OR:38.49, 95% CI:25.65-51.33, P＜0.001). ST was non-linearly associated with depression/CVD, and it was positively associated with depressive symptoms after reaching the inflection point (360 minutes). Our result showed that ST mediated 1.6% association between CVD and depression.