Association of Disease-Specific Mortality with Fitness Measurements and Nonparticipation in an 80-Year-Old Population

A lower level of physical fitness and activity is known to be associated with a shorter survival rate in community-dwelling populations of adults and elderly (Blair et al., 2001; Erlichman et al., 2002; Rantanen, 2003; Mitnitski et al., 2005). Subjects’ cardiorespiratory fitness level based on a cycle ergometer or treadmill was predictive of total mortality (Kampert et al., 1996; Bodegard et al., 2005; Park et al., 2009), fatal cardiac event (Laukkanen et al., 2004; Bodegard et al., 2005), or cancer mortality (Evenson et al., 2003) in adult persons. Leisure time activity and walking pace were also inversely associated with all-cause mortality and mortalities due to coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and cancers in middle-aged men (Kampert et al., 1996; Simith et al., 2000; Lam et al., 2004; Batty et al., 2010).