Prevalence of Brazilian children and adolescents who met health criteria for aerobic fitness: systematic review update for Report Card Brazil Project

The aim of the study was to update Brazilian evidence on the prevalence of children and adolescents who met health criteria for aerobic fitness. This systematic review is part of the Report Card Brazil Project and the search was restricted to studies published during the period from January 2018 to December 2019 in nine electronic databases. Studies with different designs, which allowed extracting information about the prevalence of children and adolescents who met health criteria for aerobic fitness (age up to 19 years or average age up to 19 years) were included. Studies published from 2020 were not included due to the possible effect of the pandemic on this indicator and because there is no certainty as to when the pandemic will end. Of the 694 studies initially identified, 13 studies with information of 14,673 children and adolescents were included after reading titles, abstracts, full texts and references. The prevalence of children and adolescents who met health criteria for aerobic fitness was 26.9% (29.7% for girls; 44.6% for boys). In this search, eight different cutoff points were used to determine adequate aerobic fitness levels and five tests were used to determine aerobic fitness. Analyzing data from the present review with the previous systematic review of this project, one third of children and adolescents in Brazil meet health criteria for aerobic fitness.