NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Most people in their 50s and older who are having difficulty walking will not get worse over the next 2 years, and many will actually improve, research set for publication in the American Journal of Public Health shows.

"Our results provide encouraging evidence of a relatively high rate of walking improvement among the most vulnerable 25 percent of the older population," Dr. Joe Feinglass and colleagues from Northwestern University in Chicago write in the March 2009 issue of the journal.

Most studies of disability in older adults have focused on functional decline, rather than improvements, Feinglass and his team note. But people often recover from functional impairments, they add, and the factors associated with improvement in function may not be the same as those that predict decline and mortality.

To investigate just what those factors might be, the researchers looked at 6,574 people 53 and older who reported some degree of difficulty walking in 2000 or 2002. This included difficulty walking across a room, difficulty walking one block, or difficulty walking several blocks.

Overall, 29 percent of the people who had trouble walking at the beginning of the study (25 percent of all study participants) showed improvement 2 years later, while 40 percent showed no change and 31 percent either had more difficulty or died.

More than one third of the subjects younger than 70 who reported trouble walking in 2000 showed improvement 2 years later, while one quarter of those 71 to 80 years old reported similar improvements.

People with diabetes, smokers and those having trouble doing activities of daily living such as feeding, bathing or dressing themselves were less likely to show improvement in walking ability. Those who said they engaged in regular, vigorous exercise were 1.4 times as likely as less active people to improve.

The researchers also found that the likelihood of improved function was the same among racial and ethnic minorities as it was among whites, and that socioeconomic status had no influence over whether or not a person's walking function would improve.

They conclude: "Interventions to reduce smoking and to increase physical ability may improve walking in older Americans."

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, March 2009.

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