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. 2009 Jul 8;4(7):e6174.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006174.

Impact of exercise in community-dwelling older adults

Ruth E Hubbard  1 , Nader Fallah, Samuel D Searle, Arnold Mitnitski, Kenneth Rockwood
Affiliations

Impact of exercise in community-dwelling older adults

Ruth E Hubbard et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Concern has been expressed that preventive measures in older people might increase frailty by increasing survival without improving health. We investigated the impact of exercise on the probabilities of health improvement, deterioration and death in community-dwelling older people.

Methods and principal findings: In the Canadian Study of Health and Aging, health status was measured by a frailty index based on the number of health deficits. Exercise was classified as either high or low/no exercise, using a validated, self-administered questionnaire. Health status and survival were re-assessed at 5 years. Of 6297 eligible participants, 5555 had complete data. Across all grades of frailty, death rates for both men and women aged over 75 who exercised were similar to their peers aged 65 to 75 who did not exercise. In addition, while all those who exercised had a greater chance of improving their health status, the greatest benefits were in those who were more frail (e.g. improvement or stability was observed in 34% of high exercisers versus 26% of low/no exercisers for those with 2 deficits compared with 40% of high exercisers versus 22% of low/no exercisers for those with 9 deficits at baseline).

Conclusions: In community-dwelling older people, exercise attenuated the impact of age on mortality across all grades of frailty. Exercise conferred its greatest benefits to improvements in health status in those who were more frail at baseline. The net effect of exercise should therefore be to improve health status at the population level.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Derivation of Cohort.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Probability of death within 5 years by number of deficits at baseline with participants grouped by age (<75 years, ≥75 years) and exercise status (high exercise: three or more times per week, at least as intense as walking or low/no exercise: all other exercisers and non exercisers).
Panel A: Men, Panel B: Women.
Figure 3
Figure 3. The probability of getting better (beige), remaining the same (tan), getting worse (dark brown) and mortality (black) as a function of number of health deficits at baseline.
Panel A: <75 years vs. ≥75 years Panel B: men vs. women Panel C: low/no exercise vs. high exercise.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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