Walking velocity in aged persons: Its association with lower extremity joint range of motion

Objective. To measure the association between walking velocity and hip and knee flexion range, ethnic background, anthropometrics, comorbid pathologie s, and coimpairments, in a sample of community-dwelling aged persons. Methods. To reach our objective, we used data from the San Antonio Longitud inal Study of Aging (SALSA), a population-based cohort of Mexican American and European American persons aged 64 to 79. By fitting hierarchical regres sion models, we measured the variance in the walking velocity over 50 feet explained by hip and knee flexion range, adjusting for the combined influen ce of demographic and anthropometric variables, coexistent pathologic condi tions, impairments, and the examiners who conducted the assessments. Results. The average walking velocity among the 702 subjects for whom data were available was 73.6 meters per minute (range 20 to 121). Bivariate anal yses revealed significant associations between walking velocity and age, se x, ethnic back-round, height, weight, presence of arthritis, diabetes melli tus, stroke, upper leg pain, peripheral vascular disease, left ventricular hypertrophy, and forced expiratory volume at 1 second. The correlation (r) between walking velocity and flexion range of the hip and knee were 0.40 an d 0.35, respectively (P less than or equal to 0.001 for each). Multivariate hierarchical models adjusting for demographic and anthropometric character istics of the subjects, and examiner variation, revealed that hip and knee flexion range explained 6% of the variance in walking velocity. Adjusting f or the presence of comorbid conditions and coimpairments reduced the varian ce attributable to hip and knee flexion range only slightly, to 5%. Conclusion. Hip and knee flexion range contribute significantly to walking velocity in the SALSA cohort of community-dwelling aged persons.