Dose-response association between the daily step count and all-cause mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

This review aims to investigate the dose-response relationship between the daily step count and all-cause mortality. PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science were searched for all articles of cohort studies investigating the association between the daily step count and all-cause mortality. Cohort research articles were included if they reported mortality with no less than 3 categories of the daily step count, and hazard ratio (HR) with a 95% Confidence Interval (CI) was reported. Dose-response association meta-analysis and subsequent sex subgroup analysis were performed. The final analysis included a total of nine studies. Compared with the low-step count population, the high-step count population had a 62% lower risk of all-cause death (HR = 0.38, 95% CI 0.27-0.49). There was a non-linear dose-response relationship between the daily step count and all-cause mortality. Compared with the least (1895 steps), the first quartile (4000 steps/day) had a 37% lower risk for all causes of death (HR = 0.63, 0.57-0.71), the second quartile (6388 steps/day) had a 60% lower risk for all causes of death (HR = 0.40, 0.32-0.49), the third quartile (9994.3 steps/day) had a 75% lower risk of all-cause death than the first quartile (HR = 0.25, 0.19-0.33).

Keywords: Daily step count; all-cause mortality; dose-response association; meta-analysis.