Analysis of latent clusters in people with hypertension and/or diabetes regarding the practice of physical activity

Abstract

Chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes have a high global prevalence and are risk factors for several harmful outcomes for individual and collective health across the planet, making it necessary to employ assertive management, such as physical activity, to ensure better prognoses. The objective was to identify the existence of latent clusters in people with hypertension and/or diabetes regarding regular physical activity. This is a cross-sectional study with hypertensive and/or diabetic people from the Hiperdia program in Paulo Afonso - Bahia. 140 people participated in the study, of which 64.3% (90) were women and the overall average age was 66.55 (SD=8.9). According to theoretical assumptions, two latent classes presented better adjustment to the selected biopsychosocial variables (AIC=592; BIC=624). Class 1 (low informal social support, high BMI and high presence of depressive symptoms; Class 2 (high informal social support, high BMI and low presence of depressive symptoms). Pearson's Chi-square test revealed an association of latent classes with the level of physical activity (p=0.011), in which latent class 1 showed behavior more linked to insufficient levels of physical activity (62.2%; p=0.011). Furthermore, there was an association regarding the existence of a community representative, in which both classes demonstrated to be strongly associated with the absence of a person who represents the community (97.3%; 80.8%; p= 0.016). We concluded that the interaction of biopsychosocial aspects segments people with hypertension and/or diabetes, through classification algorithms, constituting internal heterogeneous groups in terms of their ability to adhere to regular physical activity.