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The association between healthy aging index and trajectories of disability: a population-based cohort study

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Abstract

Background

Healthy aging index (HAI) could predict adverse health consequences including mortality and disability independent of age and comorbidity. We investigated the role of HAI on trajectories of disability throughout later life based on a nationally representative sample.

Methods

We examined 1733 participants aged over 60 years from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) followed for 7 years/4 waves repeatedly. Systolic blood pressure [SBP], cognitive function, cystatin C, peak expiratory flow [PEF], and fasting glucose were categorized using tertile or clinical reference range, and scored as 0 (healthiest), 1 (less healthy) and 2 (least healthy) respectively to further generate HAI summary scores (range 0–10). Disability was defined as the sum of impaired activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). We used linear mixed-effects model to study the association between HAI and trajectories of disability.

Results

A total of 10.5% of participants represented in the healthiest group and 22.5% ended up as the least healthy. After adjusting for all potential confounders, disability progression was significantly faster (β = 0.27, 95% CI 0.11–0.42) in the least healthy group when comparing with the healthiest.

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that HAI is associated with disability progression among adults aged over 60 years old. It might be beneficial for future interventions to specifically target older adults with high HAI scores as a means of reducing disability.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Xiuquan Lin from Fujian Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention for providing valuable comments in analysis and interpretation of data. We are grateful to all China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) participants and research team.

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of the Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province, China (Grant no.: 20KJB320035) and Hu Xin Foundation (Grant no.: HX2008).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nursing and School of Public Health, Yangzhou University, No. 136 Jiangyang Road, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China

    Raoping Tu, Huihui He, Suhang Wang, Jiali Ding, Qingping Zeng, Lu Guo & Guangyu Lu

  2. Health Research Institute, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian, China

    Yueping Li

  3. Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Tianwei Xu

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  1. Raoping Tu
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Correspondence to Raoping Tu.

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The Institutional Review Board at Peking University approved all CHARLS waves (IRB00001052–11015).

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Tu, R., He, H., Wang, S. et al. The association between healthy aging index and trajectories of disability: a population-based cohort study. Aging Clin Exp Res 34, 1893–1900 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-022-02117-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-022-02117-9

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