Walking more daily steps associated with progressively decreased risk of CVD among elderly

Walking more steps daily was connected with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in older persons, says an article published in Circulation Journal. Taking less than the commonly advocated "10,000 steps per day" has lately been linked to a decreased risk of death from any cause. The link between steps and the risk of cardiovascular disease is still poorly understood. As a result, Amanda Paluch and colleagues undertook this meta-analysis to investigate the dose-response association between daily steps and CVD, which can help define clinical and public health guidelines.

The participants were monitored for CVD events in eight prospective trials that comprised 20 152 individuals (i.e., those over the age of 18) and device-measured steps. Studies measured daily steps, and CVD events included both fatal and nonfatal heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure. Quartiles specific to each research were used in the Cox proportional hazards regression analysis, and inverse-variance-weighted random effects models were used to meta-analyze the hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).

The key findings of this study were:

1.Participants' average age was 63.2±12.4 years, and 52% of them were female.

2.There were 1523 CVD incidents recorded overall, with a mean follow-up of 6.2 years.

3.Between older and younger persons (i.e., those under the age of 60), there was a significant difference in the connection between steps taken each day and CVD.

4.In comparison to the lowest quartile, the HR for older persons in quartiles 2 through 4 was 0.80, 0.62, and 0.51 respectively.

5.In comparison to the lowest quartile, the HR for younger individuals in quartiles 2 through 4 was 0.79, 0.90, and 0.95 respectively.

6.More steps were linked to a lower risk of CVD in older persons, according to restricted cubic splines' nonlinear association study.

Authors strongly suggest that a straightforward indicator for population health and clinician-patient communication to lower the risk of CVD is tracking and promoting steps taken each day.

Reference:

Paluch, A. E., Bajpai, S., Ballin, M., Bassett, D. R., Buford, T. W., Carnethon, M. R., Chernofsky, A., Dooley, E. E., Ekelund, U., Evenson, K. R., Galuska, D. A., Newton, R. L., Jr, … Nordström, A. (2022). Prospective Association of Daily Steps With Cardiovascular Disease: A Harmonized Meta-Analysis. In Circulation. Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health). https://doi.org/10.1161/circulationaha.122.061288