Walk..Walk..Walk!

Walking speed may help clinicians predict how long their older patients will live.
USA Today (1/5, Fontana) reports that research coming out of the University of Pittsburg indicates that "walking speed" may determine how long and how well older people will live. "The findings can provide doctors with an inexpensive, safe and simple way of measuring performance that can help identify health problems," says lead researcher Stephanie Studenski, "and in many cases lead to treatments that can improve well-being, ward off disabilities and help the elderly maintain independence." Similarly, Evan Hadley, "associate director of geriatrics at the National Institute on Aging," said, "I think it's a very useful tool, and some physicians already use it."
The study authors began their work by analyzing "data from nine different studies, collectively looking at nearly 35,000 adults aged 65 and older," the CNN (1/4, Landau) "The Chart" blog reported. Among other things, they eventually noted that "for a 70-year-old man, the difference between walking 3 mi/hr and 3.5 mi/hr was four years of life on average; for a woman, it's six to seven years." According to the paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a "70-year-old man who walks at 2.5 mi/hr would expected to live an average of eight years longer than if he walks at 1 mi/hr; for a woman, that difference is about 10 years."
But in an "editorial accompanying the study, Matteo Cesari of the Universita Campus BioMedico in Rome" wrote that "much more research is needed before doctors routinely start measuring how fast people walk to get an idea of how long they may live," the Washington Post (1/5, Stein) "The Checkup" blog points out.
And, according to one expert who was not involved in the study, "for many elderly folks who walk slowly, hitting the treadmill at the gym to improve their fitness level isn't the solution," the Boston Globe (1/4, Kotz) "Daily Dose" blog reported. "We need to do more to figure out what slows gait speed," explained Dr. Farzaneh Sorond, a "stroke neurologist at Brigham and Women's hospital who studies gait speed" in the elderly. "On the other hand, if you're just starting to slow down a bit and don't have major medical problems, getting that exercise may be the key to a longer life, Sorond contends."
Bloomberg News (1/5, Ostrow), the Los Angeles Times (1/5, Stein) "Booster Shots" blog, the Time (1/4, Park) "Healthland" blog, Medscape (1/4, Barclay, subscription required), MedPage Today (1/4, Neale), HealthDay (1/4, Dotinga), and WebMD (1/4, Stacy) also covered the study.
Physical activity may help improve function, walking speed among adults with knee OA. MedPage Today (1/4, Walsh) reported that, according to a paper in Arthritis & Rheumatism, "increasing physical activity over two years can improve function and even walking speed among adults with osteoarthritis of the knee -- regardless of their level of activity." The "ongoing cohort study of more than 2,500 patients with knee osteoarthritis (knee OA) found that the average gait speed -- an objective measure of functional performance -- was 4 feet/second among patients reporting the lowest quartile of physical activity, compared with 4.2, 4.3, and 4.5 feet/second (P for trend <0.001) among quartiles with increasing activity levels." The team at Northwestern University also pointed out that "this graded relationship between physical activity and walking speed was similar across sex and age groups, and persisted after one year (P<0.001 for all)."