Walking pace is inversely associated with risk of death and cardiovascular disease: The Physicians' Health Study

Abstract

Background: Walking pace is increasingly being used to assess functional status in ambulatory settings.

Methods: We conducted a prospective analysis within the Physicians' Health Study to examine whether walking pace is associated with mortality and incident cardiovascular disease (fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass grafting and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty). Participants included 21,919 male physicians with a mean age of 67.8 ± 9.0 years.

Results: After a median follow-up of 9.4 years (IQR: 7.9-10.3), 3906 deaths and 2487 incident CVD events occurred. In a multivariable Cox proportional hazards model adjusting for age, body mass index, smoking, exercise frequency, and prevalent hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, cancer, and total weekly walking time, hazard ratios for mortality were 0.72 (95% CI: 0.64-0.81) for walking pace of 2-2.9mph, 0.63 (95% CI: 0.55-0.73) for walking pace of 3-3.9mph and 0.63 (95% CI: 0.48-0.83) for walking pace of ≥4mph compared to the group that reported not walking regularly (p trend <0.0001). Similar findings were observed for incident CVD: HRs were 0.88 (95% CI: 0.75-1.03) for a walking pace of 2-2.9mph, 0.75 (95% CI: 0.63-0.89) for a walking pace of 3-3.9mph and 0.70 (0.53-0.94) for a walking pace of ≥4mph compared to the group that reported not walking regularly (p trend 0.0001). These associations persisted after excluding those who exercised regularly.

Conclusion: We found that walking pace is inversely associated with risk of mortality and CVD among US male physicians.

Keywords: Cardiovascular disease; Epidemiology; Gait speed; Mortality; Walking pace.