Self-rated health is associated with subsequent functional decline among older adults in Japan

Abstract

SRH was an independent predictor of functional decline. SRH could be a simple assessment tool for predicting the loss or maintenance of functional ability in community-dwelling older adults. Positive self-evaluation might be useful to maintain an active lifestyle and stay healthy.

Poor self-rated health predicts the incidence of functional disability in elderly community dwellers in Japan: a prospective cohort study

“…Most of the previous studies on the relationship between poor SRH and functional disability were conducted in Western countries [20][21][22][23]33]. The results of our study are in line with the results of studies in [17]. Compared with our study, these studies had a smaller sample size (124 in Haga's study, and 654 in Hirosaki's study).…”

“…The present study had several limitations. First, variables concerning psychological factors (e.g., depression) or subjective symptoms (which are associated with poor SRH and functional disability) were not included in the study [17]. The association of poor SRH with functional disability remained significant in a sub-group analysis (Additional file 4).…”

“…Previous large population studies in Western countries have shown that elderly people with poor SRH are at a high risk for functional disabilities [20][21][22][23]. Poor SRH has also been shown to be strongly associated with mortality and functional decline in Japanese elderly residents [16][17][18][19]. The results of those studies indicate that SRH can be used for predicting future functional disabilities in Japanese.…”

“…Various endpoints including activities of daily living (ADL), basic ADL, LTCI, and independent criteria were used in previous studies. The studies mentioned above had small numbers of subjects (subjects ranging from 165 to 737) [16][17][18] except for one study [19]. Furthermore, the follow-up periods of the surveys conducted in those studies were also relatively short.…”

“…Furthermore, the follow-up periods of the surveys conducted in those studies were also relatively short. The follow-up period in one study was only 1 year [18], while the follow-up periods after the baseline surveys were 5 years in the other studies [16,17,19]. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no large-scale prospective study on the association between SRH and functional disability in elderly people using LTCI with a long follow-up period (10 years or more).…”