Slow walking linked to falls in adults aged 90 and older
Slow walking plus thinking problems was associated with fall-rate ratios of 1.35 in women and 2.34 in men versus those with neither.
Our read
Populations- Studied:
- Cohort study of 1,099 adults aged 90 years and older, mean 4.0 years
- What changed:
- Fall rates were higher with slow walking than without slow walking or cognitive impairment (incidence rate ratio 1.45)
- The catch:
- Falls relied on recall, with possible underreporting among cognitively impaired participants
Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
An observational cohort study followed 1,099 adults aged 90 and older, including 749 women and 350 men, for an average of 4.0 years. Their mean age was 93.2. Every six months, researchers assessed walking speed and cognition—thinking and memory—and asked participants or informants about falls. Slow walking meant a speed below the median for each sex on a four-meter test. Impaired cognition included dementia or cognitive impairment without dementia.
After accounting for age and education, slow walking alone was linked to higher fall rates in women and men. Impaired cognition alone was linked to higher fall rates in men, but no clear association emerged in women. Having both features was linked to higher fall rates in both sexes, compared with having neither.
Why it matters
Falls are common and can have devastating consequences in adults aged 90 and older. The work addresses which features may help identify fall risk in this understudied age group.
Caveats
This observational study cannot show causation, and participants or informants reported the falls. The findings concern adults aged 90 and older evaluated in person who completed the walking test; 98.6% were White.
From the paper
- Participants
The 90 + Study enrolled 2061 participants (Fig. 1).
- Result
In this analysis, we found that in women, ‘slow gait’ (IRR = 1.49, 95% CI = 1.15–1.93) and ‘both’ (IRR = 1.34, 95% CI = 1.06–1.70) were significantly associated with elevated risk of future falls, whereas ‘impaired cognition’ was not (IRR = 1.06, 95% CI = 0.81–1.38).
- Limitation
One limitation is the use of retrospective biannual frequency of fall reporting, which may have created a differential recall bias between cognitively intact and impaired participants.
Quoted word for word from the full text on link.springer.com.
The paper
Enhancing fall risk assessment in the oldest old: The interplay of cognition and gait speed
University of California, Irvine
GeroScience, Sep 14, 2026, Open access
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