title: Do walking and leisure-time physical activity protect against arthritis in older women?
creator: Heesch, Kristiann
creator: Brown, W J
subject: 110600 HUMAN MOVEMENT AND SPORTS SCIENCE
subject: 111712 Health Promotion
subject: 111799 Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified
subject: health education 
subject: women's health
subject: osteoarthritis and mobility 
subject: walking and health
description: Objective: To examine the prospective dose–response relationships between both leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) and walking with self-reported arthritis in older women.     Design, setting and participants: Data came from women aged 73–78 years who completed mailed surveys in 1999, 2002 and 2005 for the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health. Women reported their weekly minutes of walking and moderate to vigorous physical activities. They also reported on whether they had been diagnosed with, or treated for, arthritis since the previous survey. General estimating equation analyses were performed to examine the longitudinal relationship between LTPA and arthritis and, for women who reported walking as their only physical activity, the longitudinal relationship between walking and arthritis. Women who reported arthritis or a limited ability to walk in 1999 were excluded, resulting in data from 3613 women eligible for inclusion in these analyses.     Main results: ORs for self-reported arthritis were lowest for women who reported “moderate” levels of LTPA (OR 0.78; 95% CI 0.67 to 0.92), equivalent to 75 to <150 minutes of moderate-intensity LTPA per week. Slightly higher odds ratios were found for women who reported “high” (OR 0.81; 95% CI 0.69 to 0.95) or “very high” (OR 0.84; 95% CI 0.72 to 0.98) LTPA levels, indicating no further benefit from increased activity. For women whose only activity was walking, an inverse dose–response relationship between walking and arthritis was seen.     Conclusions: The results support an inverse association between both LTPA and walking with self-reported arthritis over 6 years in older women who are able to walk.     
publisher: BMJ Group
date: 2008
type: Journal Article
format: application/pdf
relation: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/38237/1/Heesch.pdf
relation: DOI:10.1136/jech.2007.072215
relation:    Heesch, Kristiann & Brown, W J   (2008)    Do walking and leisure-time physical activity protect against arthritis in older women?  Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 62(12), p. 1086.    
identifier: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/38237/
source: Faculty of Health