Sex differences in physical performance by age, educational level, ethnic groups and birth cohort: The Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam

Abstract

Background Older women perform consistently poorer on physical performance tests compared to men. Risk groups for this "female disadvantage" in physical performance and it's development over successive birth cohorts are unknown. This is important information for preventive strategies aimed to enhance healthy aging in all older women. This study aims to longitudinal investigate whether there are risk groups for a more apparent female disadvantage and study its trend over successive birth cohorts. Methods Data of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA) were used. All participants were aged 55-65 years at baseline. Longitudinal data of two birth cohorts with baseline measurements in 1992/1993 (n = 966, 24 year follow-up) and 2002/2003 (n = 1002, 12 year followup) were included. Follow-up measurements were repeated every three/four years. Crosssectional data of two additional cohorts were included to compare ethnic groups: A Dutch cohort (2012/2013, n = 1023) and a Migration cohort (2013/2014, n = 478) consisting of migrants with a Turkish/Moroccan ethnicity. Results Mixed model analysis showed that women aged 55 years and older had a lower age- and height-adjusted gait speed (-0.03 m/s; -0.063-0.001), chair stand speed (-0.05 stand/s; -0.071-0.033), handgrip strength (-14,8 kg; -15.69-13.84) and balance (OR = 0.71; 0.547-0.916) compared to men. The sex difference in handgrip strength diminished with increasing age, but remained stable for gait speed, chair stand speed and balance. In 2019 Sialino et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.