ABSTRACT
The risk factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease originate in childhood and adolescence, track into
adulthood, and have deleterious effects on long-term biopsychosocial health. Phenotypic sleep and fitness are
strongly associated with mechanisms involved in the development and progression of cardiovascular disease
and its risk factors (e.g., elevated body-mass index, adiposity, metabolic syndrome, elevated serum lipids,
elevated blood pressure, inflammation, autonomic nervous system imbalance, poor nutrition and diet, and
physical inactivity). Sleep and fitness are essential interacting physiological functions that are associated with
robust metabolic, hormonal, and cognitive responses, as well as with genomic and metabolomic adaptive
mechanisms. Both insufficient sleep and poor fitness are at epidemic proportions in youth and are associated
with acute health threats and increased disease risk across the lifespan. However, little is known about the
underlying mechanistic pathways that govern the interactions between fitness and sleep in developing youth in
their modulation of cardiovascular disease risk. This proposed study aims to fill a crucial gap in the
understanding how sleep and fitness interact to impact cardiovascular disease risk factors. Here we propose
an ancillary study to the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), a multicenter NIH
Common Fund project that aims to discover the molecular transducers ("molecular map") responsible for the
beneficial health effects of physical activity and fitness in humans across the lifespan. Adding sleep
assessment to the pediatric MoTrPAC study offers a transformative opportunity to begin to elucidate the
interacting mechanisms of the fitness and sleep in humans during adolescent transition, a critical period of
physical, neurobiological, and psychological development. This project proposes to evaluate a cohort of
children and adolescents across maturational stages who complete the MoTrPAC protocol, which includes two
phases: a Cross-Sectional phase, and an Endurance Exercise Intervention phase. Of note, this ancillary study
does not change the existing MoTrPAC protocol/intervention and does not include any additional interventions,
and is therefore not considered a clinical trial. This study will recruit subjects from the pediatric MoTrPAC study
and evaluate phenotypic measures of sleep at the end of each MoTrPAC phase. Data obtained will allow
exploration of fundamental mechanistic pathways underlying fitness-sleep interactions during adolescence and
guide development of future clinical trials aimed at determining optimal sleep-exercise regimens for physical
and mental health in various adolescent populations, including different racial/ethnic populations and medically
at-risk groups. In addition, results from this study will be added to the MoTrPAC data repository, yielding a rich
and unique dataset for further exploration of genomic, metabolomic, and proteomic interactions between sleep
and fitness as they impact cardiovascular disease factors.