Aim We aimed to investigate whether physical function was associated with urinary incontinence (UI) onset in community‐dwelling older Japanese women. Methods This was a 4‐year prospective cohort study. After excluding participants with UI and missing data in the baseline survey, we included 890 participants in the analyses. Physical function including grip strength, maximal walking speed, knee extension strength, single‐leg balance, and timed up and go (TUG) were measured. The primary outcome was the onset of all UI and different types of UI (urge, stress and mixed) based on the questionnaire survey. Binary logistic regression analysis was applied to calculate the adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the association between physical function and the risk of all UI and different types of UI incident. Results Among the 890 participants, 221 (25%) developed UI during the 4‐year follow‐up. After adjusting for confounders, better knee extension strength, maximal walking speed and TUG were significantly associated with a lower risk of all UI and urge UI onset, and better single‐leg balance and TUG were significantly associated with a lower risk of mixed UI onset (P for trend <0.05). No significant association was found between physical function and the risk of stress UI onset. Conclusions This study confirmed that better lower extremity physical function is associated with lower risk of urge and mixed UI onset, indicating that exercise programs focusing on maintaining and improving lower extremity physical function may be useful for reducing such events among older women. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2021; 21: 178–184.

Our combined exercise plus diet program may contribute to improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness and body weight compared with control group.

It has been reported that physical fitness of breast cancer patients is relatively lower due to the cancer treatment such as surgery, chemotherapy, or endocrine therapy. Previous studies have revealed that not only cardiorespiratory fitness but also muscle strength is lower among breast cancer patients than no disease women and these symptoms may aggravate the health-related quality of life. However, there is no study which has focused the physical fitness level in Japanese breast cancer survivors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the physical fitness level and the relationship between exercise habituation and physical fitness level in Japanese breast cancer survivors. Fifty breast cancer survivors participated in this study. Participants were assigned to either exercise habituation group (n=25) or non-exercise group (n=25). We evaluated exercise habituation using an original questionnaire and examined various physical fitness level. Body weight, body mass index, and percent body fat were significantly lower in the exercise habituation group than non-exercise group. T-score of cardiorespiratory fitness was significantly higher in the exercise habituation group than average Japanese women. These results suggested that exercise habituation is relative to body weight and cardiorespiratory fitness level in Japanese breast cancer survivors.

Background: This study aimed to investigate the association between endocrine therapy and weight gain with a history of breast cancer. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study. Recruited patients consisted of those receiving endocrine therapy and those not receiving endocrine therapy. Weight at diagnosis was collected from medical records, and current body mass was measured using a digital scale (time since diagnosis was 4.0 ± 1.9 years). Moreover, we measured current physical activity using an accelerometer and dietary intake using a validated questionnaire. The primary analysis was a t-test for the body-mass change after diagnosis between the two groups. Results: We recruited 300 patients and collected data from 292. Mean weight gain after diagnosis was 1.3 ± 3.9 kg, and the change in body mass of patients taking endocrine therapy (1.3 ± 4.0 kg) was not significantly different from that of patients not taking endocrine therapy (1.4 ± 3.8 kg, p = 0.92). There was no association of endocrine therapy, physical activity, and dietary intake with a 5% weight gain after adjusting confounding factors (e.g., breast cancer stage and chemotherapy). Conclusions: Caution is required with generalization because of sampling bias and ethnic differences.