Sitting down and getting up? Test predicts natural and cardiovascular mortality

A Brazilian study shows that the ability to sit and stand up without support is closely linked to natural and cardiovascular mortality in middle-aged and elderly adults.The Sitting-Rising Test (SRT) is considered a simple tool for assessing non-aerobic fitness, which encompasses muscular strength and power, flexibility, balance and body composition.The test is simple: The patient sits on the floor, then stands up. Each of the two movements begins with a score of five points. One point is deducted for each support used (hand, knee, forearm, etc.), and half a point for loss of balance. The final score, out of 10, is obtained by adding up the scores for sitting down and standing up. A research team observed a strong correlation between the score on this test and the risk of natural and cardiovascular mortality. Their findings were published online in June in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. The study is based on longitudinal data from 4,282 patients aged between 46 and 75 (68% men), followed up between 1998 and 2023 at the CLINIMEX private exercise medicine clinic. Over a median period of 12 years, 665 deaths (15.5% of participants) were attributed to natural and cardiovascular causes, with deaths due to COVID-19 and external causes excluded. Only 3.7% of participants with a perfect score died during the study period. In contrast, 42.1% of participants with a low score (between 0 and 4 out of 10) died. Mortality increased gradually as the score decreased, reaching 7%, 11.1% and 20.4% in the intermediate score groups.“As a physician, I'm used to alerting my patients to their blood pressure, blood sugar or cholesterol, because these factors double or triple (their risk of early death),” said physician Claudio Gil Araújo, Dean of Research and Education at CLINIMEX and first author of the study. “But when we look at non-aerobic fitness, this risk increases by five to 10 times.”To analyze the data, participants were divided into five groups according to their score. Kaplan-Meier curves and log-rank tests were used to analyze survival. The Cox regression model was used to adjust hazard ratios (HR) for variables such as age, gender, body mass index and medical conditions. Comparing the groups with the lowest and highest scores, the results indicate an HR of 3.84 (95% CI: 2.25-6.97) for natural mortality and 6.05 (95% CI: 2.29-20.94) for cardiovascular mortality. This study refines the findings of a previous work published in 2014, which had already established a link between SRT score and the risk of all-cause mortality.Simple to perform and reliable, the SRT could become a practical public health tool, according to Dr. Araújo. He now plans to build on CLINIMEX's extensive database to better understand the combined and distinct effects of aerobic and non-aerobic fitness on health.This article has been translated from its original French and first appeared on our sister site Profession Santé.

Sitting down and getting up? Test predicts natural and cardiovascular mortality

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