Healthy Lifestyle Reduces Mortality in Osteoarthritis Patients, Reveals Study

A disciplined and healthy lifestyle is believed to help minimise the risk of a variety of illnesses. A one-of-a-kind research, using information from the UK Biobank and US NHANES looked at the association between particular healthy lifestyle traits and the risk of both all-cause and cause-specific death among 104,142 osteoarthritis patients. The team mentioned that people with osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, are more likely to fall ill than the overall population. However, there is no evidence of a link between a good lifestyle and mortality in osteoarthritis patients.

Therefore, a team set out to find out whether or not good lifestyle choices in people with osteoarthritis can reduce the chance of death. The study mentioned that this is the most prevalent type of arthritis, affecting around 7% of the global population, with an especially high prevalence among the elderly. Based on each person’s body mass index (BMI) and self-reported food, sleep length, physical activity, sedentary time, social connection, smoking, and alcohol consumption — all of which are known to be linked to health — the researchers assigned each person a score for their lifestyle.

After the first two years of follow-up, 9,915 fatalities were reported. The study claimed that a good lifestyle can reduce deaths among people suffering from osteoarthritis. Individuals who suffer from this illness mostly lead sedentary lives. Different correlations between people’s lifestyles and mortality were shown through models. As per the findings, the recommended amount of sleep per night is 7 hours, whereas the turning point for moderate physical activity was 550 minutes per week and for intense physical activity was 240 minutes per week. In multivariable models, each lifestyle risk was found to be strongly related to mortality from all causes as well as death due to cancer, cardiovascular, digestive, and respiratory disorders.

Finding a healthy lifestyle pattern that lowers the risk of mortality in patients with osteoarthritis may be one of the key takeaways from this study. The huge sample size from two well-established nationwide cohorts in the UK and the US is one of the study’s primary strengths. The study is expected to go a long way towards educating patients about the importance of diet, physical health, abstinence from alcohol and smoking, and much more.