Background

Quarantine was the measure taken by governments to control the rapid spread of COVID-19. This restriction resulted in a sudden change in people’s lifestyle, leading to an increase in sedentary behavior and a related decrease in the practice of physical activity (PA). However, in neuromuscular diseases patients need to perform regular PA to counteract the negative consequences of the disease. Hence, the aim of this study was to estimate the levels of PA, measured as energy expenditure (MET–minute/week), among patients with neuromuscular disease (NMD) before and during the last week of quarantine.

Methods

A total of 268 Italian subjects, living in Sicily, completed an adapted version of the IPAQ-SF. Participants comprised 149 NMD, enrolled at the Neuromuscular Clinic of Palermo and 119 healthy subjects (control group). The SF-12 questionnaire was also administered to NMD. The Mann–Whitney U and the Kruskal–Wallis rank-sum tests were used for statistical analyses.

Results

We observed a significant decrease of the total weekly PA level during COVID-19 quarantine in both patients and controls. Moreover, a significant difference in the total weekly PA level was found depending on the presence of neuromuscular disease, impaired walking, gender and BMI. Finally, we found a correlation between SF-12 scores and the entity of the reduction of PA level during quarantine, thus confirming a relevant association with the quality of life in NMD.

Conclusion

Our study confirmed that COVID-19 quarantine has affected the practice of PA among both NMD and healthy controls.

中文翻译：

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大流行COVID-19期间神经肌肉疾病患者的体育活动显着减少：隔离的长期后果。

背景

隔离是政府采取的控制COVID-19快速传播的措施。这种限制导致人们生活方式的突然改变，导致久坐行为的增加和体育锻炼（PA）的相关减少。但是，在神经肌肉疾病中，患者需要定期进行PA治疗以抵消疾病的负面影响。因此，本研究的目的是估计检疫的最后一周之前和期间，神经肌肉疾病（NMD）患者的PA水平，以能量消耗（MET-分钟/周）来衡量。

方法

居住在西西里岛的总共268名意大利人完成了IPAQ-SF的改编版。参加者包括149名NMD，巴勒莫神经肌肉诊所和119名健康受试者（对照组）。SF-12问卷也被用于NMD。使用Mann-Whitney U和Kruskal-Wallis秩和检验进行统计分析。

结果

我们观察到在患者和对照中，在COVID-19隔离期间每周总的PA水平显着下降。此外，根据神经肌肉疾病，行走障碍，性别和BMI的存在，发现每周总PA水平存在显着差异。最后，我们发现了SF-12得分与检疫期间PA水平降低的相关性，从而证实了与NMD生活质量的相关性。

结论

我们的研究证实，COVID-19检疫已影响NMD和健康对照者PA的使用。