Associação da atividade física de adolescentes, familiares e pares: uma revisão sistemática

Objective: To analyze the association between physical activity (PA) of parents, siblings and peers with the PA of Brazilian adolescents through a systematic review. Methods: We conducted a systematic review in two stages, in June 2013 and February 2014 in the PubMed/ MEDLINE, Web of Science, EBSCO and LILACS databases using four sets of descriptors, those being the influence of parents and siblings, physical activity, type of sample, and nationality, in English and Portuguese, which should meet the following criteria: (i) healthy subjects; (ii) Brazilian adolescents; (iii) studies addressing PA; and (iv) studies published between January 2008 and February 2014. Results: The search in databases resulted in 2,094 titles of potentially relevant articles, but only seven met all the inclusion criteria. There is a positive association between parents’ and children’s PA; however, when stratified by sex, this association is found only in women, both for inactivity and for being physically active. Social support has great influence on the PA of children and adolescents; however, such association has not been found in longitudinal studies. Conclusion: There is a positive association between the PA of father and mother with that of their daughters, both for inactivity and for being active, but no association was found between parents and sons, a fact that has also been observed as to inactive siblings. Social support proved to be effective to increase the level of physical activity in adolescents.