Walking Pace, Leisure Time Physical Activity, and Resting Heart Rate in Relation to Disease-Specific Mortality in London: 40 Years Follow-Up of the Original Whitehall Study. An Update of Our Work with Professor Jerry N. Morris (1910–2009)

Batty, G. David; Shipley, Martin J.; Kivimaki, Mika; Marmot, Michael; Davey Smith, George

doi:10.1016/j.annepidem.2010.03.014

« Previous Next »Annals of Epidemiology
Volume 20, Issue 9 , Pages 661-669, September 2010

Walking Pace, Leisure Time Physical Activity, and Resting Heart Rate in Relation to Disease-Specific Mortality in London: 40 Years Follow-Up of the Original Whitehall Study. An Update of Our Work with Professor Jerry N. Morris (1910–2009)

G. David Batty, PhD
- Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Glasgow, UK Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK
- Address correspondence to: G. David Batty, PhD, Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK. Tel.: +44-141-357-7520.
Martin J. Shipley, MSc
- Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK
Mika Kivimaki, PhD
- Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK
Michael Marmot, PhD
- Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK
George Davey Smith, DSc
- Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

Received 29 December 2009; accepted 8 March 2010. published online 28 June 2010.

Purpose

To examine the association of leisure time physical activity, walking pace and resting heart rate with disease-specific mortality in a prospective cohort study by reporting updated analyses of an earlier report we produced with the British epidemiologist, Jerry N. Morris (1910–2009).

Methods

In the original Whitehall study, 19,019 male, nonindustrial, London-based government employees, aged from 40 to 69 years in 1967 and 1970, participated in a medical examination during which data on leisure time physical activity (N = 6715), self-rated walking pace (N = 6729), and resting heart rate (N = 1183) were collected. Cox proportional hazards analyses were used to estimate hazard ratios for the relation between these exposures and disease-specific mortality.

Results

In models adjusted for a range of covariates including socioeconomic status, smoking, and obesity, high resting heart rate was associated with a modestly elevated rate of mortality from all causes (hazard ratio; 95% confidence interval: tertile 3 vs. tertile 1: 1.17; 0.99, 1.37 p[trend]: 0.07) and respiratory disease (1.69; 1.04, 2.76 p[trend]: 0.03). Of the two markers of physical activity, walking pace was inversely related to mortality ascribed to all causes (slow vs. high walking pace 1.71; 1.53, 1.91 p[trend]: <0.001]), coronary heart disease (2.03; 1.68, 2.47 p[trend]: <0.001), and total cancers (1.25; 0.98, 1.59 p[trend]: 0.04). The corresponding associations for leisure time activity were typically weaker. For other mortality endpoints—respiratory disease (walking pace: 1.96; 1.48, 2.60 p[trend]: <0.001]), hematopoietic cancer (walking pace: 1.36; 0.52, 3.51 p[trend]: 0.03), stomach cancer (inactive versus active leisure time: 1.53; 0.88, 2.64 p[trend]: 0.04), and rectal cancer (walking pace: 4.85; 1.70, 13.8 p[trend]: 0.007)—individual activity indices revealed effects, but not both.