Men benefit more from midlife leisure-time physical activity than women regarding the development of late-life disability - results of the KORA-Age study.
OBJECTIVE: Encouraging physical activity is an important public health measure to reduce disability prevalence in the aged. The aims of this study were to determine the association between midlife physical activity and late-life disability and to investigate gender-specific differences. METHOD: This data originates from the KORA-Age cohort, a follow-up in 2008 of the MONICA/KORA S1 - S4 surveys (1984 - 2001) situated in Augsburg, a city in Southern Germany. We applied a multivariable hurdle model to investigate the association of physical activity and disability. RESULTS: We analysed 3,333 persons with a mean follow-up of 18±5.5 years. Using hurdle models, moderate and high activity had a protective effect on the occurrence of disability (OR=0.80 and 0.73), but not on severity (i.e. number of limitations). We observed a strong gender-specific difference in this association, with men benefitting more from exercise. CONCLUSION: Elevated physical activity reduces the risk for becoming disabled and postpones the onset of disability by several years, but we could not show an effect on the severity of disability. In addition, men seem to benefit more from leisure-time physical activity than women.