Association of objectively measured walking speed with incident cardiovascular diseases in middle-aged and older Chinese adults

Objective

To evaluate the association between objectively measured walking speed and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in middle-aged and elderly Chinese adults.

Methods

A total of 3969 participants from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) were included in this study. Multilevel logistic and linear regression models (community-household-individual) were used to estimate the association between walking speed and the risk of CVD.

Results

A total of 1037 participants had a CVD event during the follow-up period, including 776 (19.6%) cases of cardiac disease and 353 (8.9%) cases of stroke. Participants who walked faster had a lower risk of CVD (tertile 2: OR = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.67-0.97, P = 0.022; tertile 3: OR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.60–0.89, P = 0.002). Further analysis showed that participants who walked faster also had a lower risk of cardiac disease and stroke (cardiac disease: tertile 2: OR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.74–1.12, P = 0.368; tertile 3: OR = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.68–1.07, P = 0.161; stroke: tertile 2: OR = 0.33, 95% CI: 0.14–0.78, P = 0.012; tertile 3: OR = 0.30, 95% CI: 0.11–0.82, P = 0.019). The results were consistent in pre-specified subgroups by sex, age, and body mass index.

Conclusion

We found that faster, objectively measured walking speed was significantly associated with a lower risk of CVD, especially stroke, in middle-aged and elderly Chinese people.