Physical Activity in Youth With Down Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder

Few studies have paid attention to identifying physical activity (PA) in youth with disabilities using objective measures.

Background/Purpose: This study aimed to compare PA patterns between youth with Down syndrome (DS) and youth with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and to estimate the minimum number of monitoring days and hours needed for both groups using the PA data measured by accelerometers.

Method: A total of 43 youth with DS (mean age=12.7) and 64 youth with ASD (mean age=12.4) participated in this study, and each participant was asked to wear an accelerometer on the ankle for consecutive 7 days and 10 hours a day. Independent t-tests were used to examine group differences in total activity counts and time spent in PA levels, and EduG 6.0 was used to estimate the minimum number of monitoring days and hours in both groups.

Analysis/Results: No significant differences were observed for total activity counts between DS and ASD group. However, we found youth with DS spent more time in light PA, while youth with ASD spent more time in moderate-to-vigorous PA. In addition, 3 days and 13 hours were needed for youth with DS, and 3 days and 8 hours for youth with ASD to obtain reliable PA estimates.

Conclusions: Youth with ASD failed to show significantly higher PA counts than youth with DS, and both groups needed fewer numbers of monitoring days to obtain reliable PA estimates compared to non-disabled peer group. These findings may have important implications for subject compliance and overall research cost.