TY - JOUR

T1 - Longevity in male and female joggers

T2 - the Copenhagen City Heart Study

AU - Schnohr, Peter

AU - Marott, Jacob L

AU - Lange, Peter

AU - Jensen, Gorm B

PY - 2013/4/1

Y1 - 2013/4/1

N2 - Since 1970, jogging has become an increasingly popular form of exercise, but concern about harmful effects has been raised following reports of deaths during jogging. The purpose of this study was to investigate if jogging, which can be very vigorous, is associated with increased all-cause mortality in men and women. Jogging habits were recorded in a random sample of 17,589 healthy men and women aged 20-98 years, invited between 1976 and 2003 to the Copenhagen City Heart Study. The expected lifetime was calculated by integrating the predicted survival curve estimated in the Cox model. In this study 1,878 persons (1,116 men and 762 women) were classified as joggers. During the 35-year maximum follow-up period, we registered 122 deaths among joggers and 10,158 deaths among nonjoggers. The age-adjusted hazard ratio of death among joggers was 0.56 (95% confidence interval: 0.46, 0.67) for men and 0.56 (95% confidence interval: 0.40, 0.80) for women. The age-adjusted increase in survival with jogging was 6.2 years in men and 5.6 years in women. This long-term study of joggers showed that jogging was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality and a substantial increase in survival for both men and women.

AB - Since 1970, jogging has become an increasingly popular form of exercise, but concern about harmful effects has been raised following reports of deaths during jogging. The purpose of this study was to investigate if jogging, which can be very vigorous, is associated with increased all-cause mortality in men and women. Jogging habits were recorded in a random sample of 17,589 healthy men and women aged 20-98 years, invited between 1976 and 2003 to the Copenhagen City Heart Study. The expected lifetime was calculated by integrating the predicted survival curve estimated in the Cox model. In this study 1,878 persons (1,116 men and 762 women) were classified as joggers. During the 35-year maximum follow-up period, we registered 122 deaths among joggers and 10,158 deaths among nonjoggers. The age-adjusted hazard ratio of death among joggers was 0.56 (95% confidence interval: 0.46, 0.67) for men and 0.56 (95% confidence interval: 0.40, 0.80) for women. The age-adjusted increase in survival with jogging was 6.2 years in men and 5.6 years in women. This long-term study of joggers showed that jogging was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality and a substantial increase in survival for both men and women.

KW - Adult

KW - Aged

KW - Aged, 80 and over

KW - Denmark

KW - Female

KW - Health Behavior

KW - Humans

KW - Jogging

KW - Longevity

KW - Male

KW - Middle Aged

KW - Mortality

KW - Proportional Hazards Models

KW - Sex Factors

KW - Socioeconomic Factors

U2 - 10.1093/aje/kws301

DO - 10.1093/aje/kws301

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 23449779

VL - 177

SP - 683

EP - 689

JO - American Journal of Epidemiology

JF - American Journal of Epidemiology

SN - 0002-9262

IS - 7

ER -