Joint Pain in Late Life Linked to Mid-Life Activity Levels

Maintaining even low levels of physical activity (PA) throughout middle age was associated with lower risk of joint symptoms later in life, especially in obese women, according to the results of a recent study.

In order to examine whether BMI, menopausal status, and hormone therapy (HT) use affects the association between PA levels in middle age and the risk of joint symptoms later in life, researchers collected data on 6661 participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Healthy. The participants completed questionnaires every 3 years from 1998 to 2010, including questions on joint stiffness and pain.
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The researchers categorized the participants by PA patterns, including “none-or-low”, low-or-meeting-guidelines”, “fluctuating”, or “meeting guidelines-at-al-times”.

Overall, those women in the fluctuating and none-to-low physical activity groups had higher risk of incident joint symptoms than those in the meeting-guidelines-at-all-times group. This association was statistically significant only in obese participants. Menopausal status and HT use did not appear to affect the association.

“This apparent protective effect of physical activity on joint symptoms was stronger in obese women than in under or normal weight women, and not related to menopause and hormone therapy status.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Peeters G, Edwards KL, Brown WJ, et al. Potential effect modifiers of the association between physical activity patterns and joint symptoms in middle aged women [published online December 6, 2017]. Arthritis Care Res. doi: 10.1002/acr.23430