RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 The importance of the physical activity bout lengths in lung-healthy elderly people JF European Respiratory Journal JO Eur Respir J FD European Respiratory Society SP P4176 VO 44 IS Suppl 58 A1 Sandra Ortlieb A1 Stefan Karrasch A1 Annette Peters A1 Barbara Thorand A1 Eva Grill A1 Alexander Horsch A1 Holger Schulz YR 2014 UL http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/Suppl_58/P4176.abstract AB Background: For beneficial health effects, physical activity (PA) recommendations suggest that the elderly should spend at least 150 minutes in moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) per week, performed in bouts of at least 10 min.Aims and objectives: This study aims to determine the proportion of people meeting the PA recommendations under consideration of different bout lengths and to describe the associations between different bout length criteria in MVPA with multimorbidity and disability in lung-healthy elderly using accelerometry.Methods: PA was measured in 168 lung-healthy subjects (aged 65-89), using triaxial GT3X accelerometers for ten days. Each bout length referred to the minimal number of consecutive minutes in MVPA required for inclusion in the calculation of accumulated time in MVPA.Results: 55% of the time in MVPA was performed in bouts of one minute. 35.7% of the participants met the current PA recommendations of performing at least 150 min of MVPA, regardless of the bout length, and 11.9% reached this in bouts of at least 10 minutes. Differences between people with and without a diagnosis of disability or multimorbidity were stronger under consideration of short bouts instead of only using longer bouts, and more obvious with regard to disablity compared to multimorbidity. There was little difference between disabled individuals and those which were both disabled and multimorbid.Conclusions: In the lung-healthy elderly, the accumulated time in MVPA shows a stronger relationship with health and functioning under inclusion of shorter bouts than just considering longer bouts. If people are both disabled and multimorbid, disability seems to be the limiting factor for the performance of MVPA.