Abstract
Using data from eight UK cohorts participating in the Healthy Ageing across the Life Course (HALCyon) research programme, with ages at physical capability assessment ranging from 50 to 90+ years, we harmonised data on objective measures of physical capability (i.e. grip strength, chair rising ability, walking speed, timed get up and go, and standing balance performance) and investigated the cross-sectional age and gender differences in these measures. Levels of physical capability were generally lower in study participants of older ages, and men performed better than women (for example, results from meta-analyses (N = 14,213 (5 studies)), found that men had 12.62 kg (11.34, 13.90) higher grip strength than women after adjustment for age and body size), although for walking speed, this gender difference was attenuated after adjustment for body size. There was also evidence that the gender difference in grip strength diminished with increasing age,whereas the gender difference in walking speed widened (p<0.01 for interactions between age and gender in both cases). This study highlights not only the presence of age and gender differences in objective measures of physical capability but provides a demonstration that harmonisation of data from several large cohort studies is possible. These harmonised data are now being used within HALCyon to understand the lifetime social and biological determinants of physical capability and its changes with age.
Highlights
In recent years there have been an increasing number of projects initiated which aim to draw together data from a range of population-based studies to undertake cross-study collaborative work
Younger participants tended to have higher levels of physical capability as indicated by stronger grip strength, shorter chair rise times, faster walking and Timed Get Up and Go (TUG) speeds and lower odds of inability to balance for 5 seconds than older participants (p,0.01 in the majority of tests for trend across 5 year age groups)
Main findings There are age and gender differences in physical capability levels in UK cohorts born across the first half of the twentieth century, assessed at age 50 y and above; levels of physical capability decline with age and men perform better than women in most measures, for walking speed this gender difference was attenuated after adjustment for body size
Summary
In recent years there have been an increasing number of projects initiated which aim to draw together data from a range of population-based studies to undertake cross-study collaborative work. One of the main drivers of this trend has been the rise of genetic epidemiology which requires much larger sample sizes in order to achieve sufficient statistical power than analyses of traditional epidemiological risk factors [7]. This cross-study approach has applications and potential benefits across many areas of epidemiological research [10], including the study of ageing [6,11,12]
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