Healthy aging and mortality: the Italian longitudinal study on aging

Nadia Minicuci, Università di Padova
Marianna Noale, Università di Padova

This study analyses the concept of vitality and evaluates at what extend it explains mortality in a cohort of 5632 Italians aged [65-84] years, representative of the Italian population. Clinical assessment of major chronic conditions, physical and mental status were measured at baseline in 1992 and 4 years later. The operational definition of vitality status in “high”, “medium” and “low” was based both on the cognitive and the physical status. Subjects belonging to the low vitality group had the highest risk of all-cause mortality, followed by those with a diagnosis of heart failure and those underweight. The inspection of the characteristics associated to mortality provide some insights into which life-course preventive measures could be implemented, possibly addressed to the impaired functioning .