The Association of Stair Climbing Behaviors With Hazard of All-Cause Mortality in Adults With or At Risk of Knee Osteoarthritis
Objective To investigate the association of stair climbing difficulty and stair climbing frequency with the risk of all-cause mortality over 13 years in adults with or at high risk for knee OA. Methods We used data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI), a prospective cohort study of community-dwelling adults with or at high risk for symptomatic knee OA. The exposures were stair climbing difficulty and frequency, assessed at baseline using self-report questionnaires. The outcome was all-cause mortality, assessed from baseline through 13 years of follow-up. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox proportional hazards regression were used to investigate the association between stair climbing exposures and all-cause mortality. Results Three hundred seven (6.81%) and 310 (6.84%) participants in the difficulty and frequency samples, respectively, died during 13 years of follow-up. Those who were limited in any capacity in terms of their stair climbing ability had 54% to 84% greater hazard of