Abstract
Objective
To investigate associations between leisure activities, examining each activity separately
and in combination, and all-cause mortality among the Chinese oldest-old (≥80 years)
population.
Design
Prospective cohort study.
Setting
Community-living, the oldest-old from 22 provinces in China.
Participants
We included 30,070 Chinese individuals aged ≥80 years (mean age: 92.7 years) from
the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey from 1998 to 2014.
Measurements
Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate relationships between leisure
activities and all-cause mortality, adjusting for covariates including sociodemographic
and lifestyle factors, self-reported medical history, and other potential confounders.
Results
During 110,278 person-years of follow-up, 23,661 deaths were documented. Participants
who engaged in watching TV or listening to the radio, playing cards or mah-jong, reading
books or newspapers, gardening, keeping domestic animals or pets, or attending religious
activities “almost every day” had a significantly lower mortality risk (adjusted hazard
ratios ranged from 0.82 to 0.89; P < .01 for all) than did participants who “never” engaged in those activities. Furthermore,
engagement in multiple leisure activities was associated with a reduced risk of all-cause
mortality (P for the trend < .001).
Conclusions and implications
Frequent participation in leisure activities might help decrease the risk of death
in the Chinese oldest-old population. This finding has important implications for
public health policy and encourages the incorporation of a broad range of leisure
activities into the daily lives of oldest-old individuals.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 03, 2019
Footnotes
Z-H.L. and X-R.Z. contributed equally to the work.
The Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study (CLHLS), which provided the data analyzed in this paper, is jointly supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (81573207, 71233001, 71490732, and 81573247), and the US National Institute of Aging (2P01AG031719 and 3P01AG031719-07S1). This work was also supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC2000400) and the Construction of High-level University of Guangdong (C1050008 and C1051007). The funders played no role in the study design or implementation; data collection, management, analysis, or interpretation; manuscript preparation, review, or approval; or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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