Physical activity reductions in male veterans with traumatic brain injury

BACKGROUND: The purpose was to identify associations between physical activity (PA) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a cohort of male Veterans. METHOD: Cross-sectional study examining data from one site of a longitudinal study on cognitive assessment of Veterans after TBI (n=161). PA was determined using three activity related questions from the Participation Objective, Participation Subjective interview (POPS). One-way ANOVA was used to determine group differences between Veterans with and without TBI (n=91 and 70, respectively). Multiple regression analyses were calculated to predict total PA and individual components of PA based on ethnicity, education, age, post-traumatic stress disorder (PCLM), symptoms (NSI), anxiety (BAI) and history of TBI. RESULTS: The TBI group was significantly younger than the non-TBI, (29.11 ± 7.35 to 34.63 ± 9.87 years; p≤0.001). As expected, Veterans with TBI had significantly higher scores on the BDI, BAI, PCLM and NSI. Total PA scores (range: 0-9) were significantly lower in Veterans with TBI compared to those without (3.82 ±2.29 to 4.9 ±2.38; p=0.004). Age was a significant predictor for total PA (p=0.007), doing home repairs (p=0.003), and doing yard work (p=0.001) such that one year increase in age increased total PA, home repair, and yard work by 0.059, 0.031, 0.035 respectively. Ethnicity was a significant predictor for cleaning the house (p=0.001) with being Caucasian related to a decrease in cleaning house by 0.58. CONCLUSION: Veterans with TBI reported reductions in PA when compared to those without TBI. PA was not significantly associated with TBI history, or mental health indicators.