Item Details

title

EXAMINING THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN BODY COMPOSITION AND PHYSICAL FUNCTION IN CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE

author

Todoroff, Christa Marie

abstract

BACKGROUND: Current literature has yielded unequivocal results regarding the effect of obesity on physical function in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a discrepancy that may be related to differences in defining and measuring obesity. The purpose of this study was to examine whether specific body composition measures were associated with physical function in COPD patients. METHODS: 170 COPD patients with complete dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, six-minute walk (6MW), stair climb time (SCT), and self-report physical function questionnaire (PFQ) data were used for these analyses. Pearson product moment correlations were used to determine which measures of body composition were significantly correlated with physical function measures. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was then used to determine if body composition measures correlated with physical function explained additional variance in physical function measures after controlling for body mass index (BMI) and disease severity. RESULTS: After accounting for BMI and disease severity, appendicular lean mass explained an additional 13.3% of variance in 6MWD and an additional 3.9% of variance in PFQ. Appendicular fat mass accounted for an additional 5.4% of variance in SCT. CONCLUSIONS: These results highlight the contribution of specific body composition measures in the performance of physical function tasks within the COPD population.

subject

body composition

chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

obesity

physical function

six-minute walk

contributor

Berry, Michael J (committee chair)

Brubaker, Peter (committee member)

Miller, Gary (committee member)

date

2021-06-03T08:36:20Z (accessioned)

2021 (issued)

degree

Health and Exercise Science (discipline)

embargo

2026-06-01 (terms)

2026-06-01 (liftdate)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/98840 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis