Association between standing height and physical disability among U.S. adults aged 60 years and older: findings from NHANES 2015–2018

Abstract

Abstract Background Physical disability is an important cause of affecting the quality of life in the elderly. The association between standing height and physical disability is less studied. Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the possible link between standing height and physical disability among U.S. adults aged 60 years and older. Methods The cross-sectional data were obtained from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2015–2018. Physical disability was assessed by six questions: “Have serious difficulty hearing (SDH)?”, “Have serious difficulty seeing (SDS)?”, “Have serious difficulty concentrating (SDC)?”, “Have serious difficulty walking (SDW)?”, “Have difficulty dressing or bathing (DDB)?” and “Have difficulty doing errands alone (DDEA)?”. Responses to these questions were “yes” or “no”. Answer yes to one of the above six questions was identified as physical disability. Standing height (cm) was measured with an altimeter. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to examine the possible link between standing height and physical disability after adjustment for all covariates. Results A total of 2624 participants aged ≥ 60 years were included in our study, including 1279 (48.7%) females and 1345 (51.3%) males. The mean age of participants was 69.41 ± 6.82 years. After adjusting for all potential confounders, the inverse relationship between standing height and all physical disability (APD) was statistically significant (OR = 0.976, 95%CI:0.957–0.995). In addition, among six types of physical disability (SDH, SDS, SDC, SDW, DDB, DDEA), standing height was also a protective factor for SDW (OR = 0.961, 95%CI:0.939–0.983) and DDEA (OR = 0.944, 95%CI:0.915–0.975) in the full-adjusted model. Conclusion The cross-sectional population based study demonstrates that standing height is a protective factor for physical disability among U.S. adults aged 60 years and older.