Prevalence of Brazilian children and youth who meet health criteria for cardiorespiratory fitness: systematic review

Abstract

The study aimed to systematically review the literature to identify the prevalence of Brazilian children and adolescents that meet health criteria for cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF). The search was performed in the electronic databases (PubMED, SciELO, LILACS, Scopus, SPORTDiscus and Web of Science) and list of references of identified articles. Inclusion criteria were: population composed of children and/or adolescents (0-19 years or average age up to 19 years); studies with Brazilian children and/or adolescents and observational studies with cross-sectional or longitudinal design. The process of analysis of studies involved reading titles, abstracts and full texts. After these phases, 60 articles were eligible. Regarding the design, two studies were longitudinal. Of the total studies included, 49 presented moderate methodological quality values and 11 presented low methodological quality values, according to National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute instrument. The prevalence of children and adolescents who met CRF health criteria varied among studies (7.5% to 70.4%), and this variation was higher in girls than in boys. Total of 49.093 individuals aged 6-19 years were surveyed to compute all of these studies, resulting in 32.2% of subjects (27.7% of boys and 28.4% of girls) with CRF levels adequate for health around Brazil. These results may help to screen the pediatric population at risk if CRF is considered as a health measure.