Abstract
Background: This 3.6-year prospective study examined combined impacts of physical activity, dietary variety, and social interaction on incident disability and estimated population-attributable fraction for disability reduction in older adults.
Methods: Participants were 7,822 initially non-disabled residents (3,966 men; 3,856 women) aged 65–84 years of Ota City, Tokyo, Japan. Sufficiency of moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA) ≥150 min/week, dietary variety score (DVS) ≥3 (median), and social interaction (face-to-face and/or non-face-to-face) ≥1 time/week was assessed using self-administered questionnaires. Disability incidence was prospectively identified using the long-term care insurance system’s nationally unified database.
Results: During a follow-up of 3.6 years, 1,046 (13.4%) individuals had disabilities. Independent multivariate-hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals of MVPA, DVS, and social interaction sufficiency for incident disability were 0.68 (0.59–0.78), 0.87 (0.77–0.99), and 0.91 (0.79–1.03), respectively. Incident disability HRs (95% CIs) gradually reduced with increased frequency of satisfying these behaviors (any one: 0.82, 0.65–1.03; any two: 0.65, 0.52–0.82; and all three behaviors: 0.54, 0.43–0.69), in an inverse dose-response manner (P < 0.001 for trend). Population-attributable fraction for disability reduction in satisfying any one, any two, and all three behaviors were 4.0% (–0.2, 7.9), 9.6% (4.8–14.1), and 16.0% (8.7–22.8), respectively.
Conclusion: Combining active physical activity, dietary variety, and social interaction substantially enhances the impacts on preventing disability among older adults, with evidence of an inverse dose-response manner. Adding the insufficient behavior element to individual habits and preexisting social group activities may be effective in preventing disability in the community.
© 2021 Satoshi Seino et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
