OBJECTIVES This study examined the associations among self-care or mobility limitations, use of assistive devices or personal help, and well-being while giving special attention to 3 dimensions of well-being and older adults' educational attainment. METHOD The analysis was based on 4,456 community-dwelling older adults with self-care or mobility limitations who completed interviews in the fir...

BACKGROUND The association between low socioeconomic status and poor physical functioning has been well described; biomedical factors may play an important role in explaining these differences. This study examines the association between socioeconomic status and incident mobility limitation in well-functioning older adults, and seeks to determine whether this link could be explained by biomedic...

BACKGROUND Obesity is a risk factor for disability, but risk of specific adipose depots is not completely understood. OBJECTIVE We investigated associations between mobility limitation, performance, and the following adipose measures: body mass index (BMI) and areas and densities of visceral adipose tissue (VAT), subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), and intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT) in ol...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular risk factors (CRFs) such as smoking and diabetes have been associated with mobility limitations among older adults. We seek to examine to what extent individual and aggregated CRFs and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are associated with mobility limitation. METHODS The study sample included 2725 participants (age ≥60 years, mean age 72.7 years, 62% women) in the Swedi...

BACKGROUND Research has demonstrated a bidirectional relationship between physical function and depression, but studies on their association in migrant populations are scarce. We examined the association between mental health symptoms and mobility limitation in Russian, Somali and Kurdish migrants in Finland. METHODS We used data from the Finnish Migrant Health and Wellbeing Study (Maamu). Th...

BACKGROUND Mobility limitations are prevalent, potentially reversible precursors to mobility loss that may go undetected in older adults. This study evaluates standardized administration of an endurance walk test for identifying unrecognized and impending mobility limitation in community elders. METHODS Men and women (1480 and 1576, respectively) aged 70-79 years with no reported mobility lim...

Obesity in middle and old age predicts mobility limitation; however, the cumulative effect of overweight and/or obesity over the adult life course is unknown. The association between overweight and/or obesity in young, middle, and late adulthood and its cumulative effect on incident mobility limitation was examined among community-dwelling US adults aged 70-79 years at baseline (1997-1998) in t...

BACKGROUND Preventing mobility disability depends on matching interventions to individual needs. The purpose of this study is to improve targeting by determining whether mobility performance is associated with, and predicts, mobility disability hierarchically. The hypothesis is that poorer performance tested by more demanding tasks is more strongly associated with current and future mobility "l...