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Women See Bigger Heart Gains From Exercise Than Men, Wearable Data Study Shows

The Nature Cardiovascular Research analysis of UK Biobank accelerometer records finds steeper coronary risk reductions per activity minute for women.

Overview

  • At 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity per week, women had a 22% lower risk of coronary heart disease, compared with 17% for men.
  • To reach roughly a 30% reduction, women accrued about 250 weekly minutes of activity, whereas men needed around 530 minutes.
  • Among participants with existing coronary disease, men required about 1.7 times more activity than women to achieve comparable relative mortality risk reductions.
  • The study analyzed wearable-accelerometer data from more than 85,000 UK Biobank participants with a median follow-up of about eight years, recording 3,764 incident events among roughly 80,000 initially disease-free individuals.
  • Cardiology experts urged sex-tailored activity guidance and further sex-specific research, while noting the UK Biobank’s limited representativeness and the need for replication in more diverse cohorts.