Age-Related Change in Mobility: Perspectives From Life Course Epidemiology and Geroscience

Mobility is the most studied and most relevant physical ability affecting quality of life with strong prognostic value for disability and survival. Natural selection has built the "engine" of mobility with great robustness, redundancy, and functional reserve. Efficient patterns of mobility...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences Vol. 71; no. 9; p. 1184
Main Authors: Ferrucci, Luigi, Cooper, Rachel, Shardell, Michelle, Simonsick, Eleanor M, Schrack, Jennifer A, Kuh, Diana
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 01.09.2016
Subjects:
Aged
Aging
Evidence-Based Medicine
Exercise
Geriatric Assessment
Geriatrics
Humans
Italy - epidemiology
Mobility Limitation
Osteoporosis - complications
Osteoporosis - epidemiology
Osteoporosis - prevention & control
Persons with Disabilities - statistics & numerical data
Quality of Life
Risk Assessment
Risk Factors
United States - epidemiology
Mobility
Epidemiology
Life course
Geroscience
ISSN:1758-535X, 1758-535X
Online Access:Get more information
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Mobility is the most studied and most relevant physical ability affecting quality of life with strong prognostic value for disability and survival. Natural selection has built the "engine" of mobility with great robustness, redundancy, and functional reserve. Efficient patterns of mobility can be acquired during development even by children affected by severe impairments. Analogously, age-associated impairments in mobility-related physiological systems are compensated and overt limitations of mobility only occur when the severity can no longer be compensated. Mobility loss in older persons usually results from multiple impairments in the central nervous system, muscles, joints, and energetic and sensory physiological systems. Early preclinical changes in these physiological systems that precede mobility loss have been poorly studied. Peak performance, rate of decline, compensatory behaviors, or subclinical deterioration of physiological resources may cumulatively influence both timing of mobility loss and chances of recovery, but their role as risk factors has not been adequately characterized. Understanding the natural history of these early changes and intervening on them would likely be the most effective strategy to reduce the burden of disability in the population. For example, young women with low bone peak mass could be counseled to start strength resistance exercise to reduce their high risk of developing osteoporosis and fracture later in life. Expanding this approach to other physiological domains requires collecting and interpreting data from life course epidemiological studies, establishing normative measures of mobility, physical function, and physical activity, and connecting them with life course trajectories of the mobility-relevant physiological domains.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ObjectType-Review-3
content type line 23
ISSN:1758-535X
1758-535X
DOI:10.1093/gerona/glw043