Track your steps: Research shows that sex, medications and physical activity affect fall frequency

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — New research from Purdue University College of Health and Human Sciences reveals that young adults’ gender, number of prescription drugs, and amount of physical activity have a significant effect on their fall patterns, which was previously poorly studied. .

Published in PLOS ONE, the observational study by Shirley Rietdyk, a professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology, examined the frequency and circumstances of falls among college students.

She found that men were more likely to fall while women were more likely to stumble. She also found that higher levels of physical activity in younger people, such as walking or playing sports, increased the likelihood of a fall – while in older adults, more physical activity than usually protects against falls. However, in a similar pattern to older adults, a greater number of prescription drugs resulted in a higher number of falls in younger adults.

Falls are the leading cause of injury among all ages in the United States, according to non-fatal injury data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and these findings provide the opportunity for more research. further investigation to investigate the causes of these incidents.

It could lead to the development of interventions, such as teaching individuals to pay attention to environmental cues rather than social cues when they are walking. These can be done over a lifetime before a significant balance problem exists.

“If you talk to older people, some of them will identify themselves as frequent fallers, but then they tell me they also fall a lot when they are young,” says Rietdyk. “That piece really excites me. Is there some kind of latent mechanism that causes someone to fall and continue throughout life?”

Over the course of 16 weeks, study participants were asked to respond to daily emails and respond to whether they had slipped, tripped, or fallen in the past 24 hours. If they answer yes, more questions will be asked about the circumstances of the case.

Shirley Rietdyk, professor of health and kinesiology at Purdue University’s School of Health and Human Sciences, is studying falls and biomechanics in young people. (Photo provided) Download photo

Rietdyk has been studying balance and mobility in older adults since the 1980s, but she didn’t begin her research in younger people until recent years. She began to see the importance of falls in young people when some of her students shared stories of where they fell.

“When people learn that you are researching falls, they have a fall story to share – their grandmother fell and broke her hip, or their wife was gardening and fell,” says Rietdyk. , or they tell the story of their own fall. “What I’ve noticed is college students tell me about their falls, and I think that’s unusual.”

In the study, Rietdyk found that some participants experienced nine or more falls in a semester — about two falls per month — and all of those participants were female students.

This research goes beyond the initial pilot study that Rietdyk and her team conducted in 2016, which found that young people fall more often than they expected. The recent study expanded the number of participants from 94 undergraduate students to 343, which provided the researchers with enough data to support their previous findings and to go beyond them to compare the fall pattern of young women with that of young men.

“Since we published our first paper in 2016, other authors using different approaches are proving parallel observations: Falling is no small matter,” says Rietdyk. for young people.

Rietdyk said the study included factors like drinking and texting, which many attribute to college students’ falls. While substance use contributed to some falls – about 11% – very few falls were caused by texting. Rietdyk notes that individuals typically walk slower during this activity and are therefore better equipped to recover. Some falls that occur while texting often happen on the stairs, which requires the environment to pay more attention to foot placement.

However, even considering falls due to these causes, more than 80% of falls are not caused by these factors, which suggests that perhaps something bigger is going on.

Based on the results of this study, Rietdyk said, she is interested in further investigating the differences between women and men in relation to falls, noting that if the study can pinpoint exactly what What’s going on in younger people, it can tell what’s going on in older people and potentially offer solutions to improve overall balance and reduce the number of falls.

The paper was co-authored by Bruce A. Craig, professor of statistics at Purdue University, and former Purdue University PhD students HyeYoung Cho and Michel JH Heijnen.

About Purdue University

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Writers, Media Contact: Rebecca Hoffa, rhoffa@purdue.edu

Source: Shirley Rietdyk, srietdyk@purdue.edu

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ABSTRACT

Falls in young adults: Effects of sex, physical activity, and prescription drugs

HyeYoung Cho, Michel JH Heijnen, Bruce A. Craig, Shirley Rietdyk

DOI

Falls are a major public health problem not only for older adults but also young adults, with fall-related injuries occurring more frequently in adult women than in men. However, gender differences in the frequency and circumstances of falls among young adults have not been adequately studied. This study quantified the frequency and circumstances of falls as a function of gender, physical activity, and prescription medication in young adults. For 16 weeks, young participants (N = 325; 89 men; 19.9 ± 1.1 years) responded to daily emails asking if they had slipped, tripped, or fallen in the past 24 hours. Falls and fall-related injuries are not uncommon among young adults: 48% have fallen at least once, 25% have fallen more than once, and 10% reported injuries. The most popular activities at the time of the fall for women were walking (44%) and sports (33%), while for men it was sports (49%) and walking (37%). A zero-inflated Poisson model revealed that a higher number of falls was associated with the following: higher levels of physical activity (p = 0.025), more medication (p < 0.0001) and male (p = 0.008). Regarding the circumstances of the fall, women were more likely to be talking to friends at the time of the fall (OR (95% CI): 0.35 (0.14–0.73); p = 0.01) . For slips and falls without falls, men and women reported the same number of slips (OR (95% CI): 0.885 (0.638–1.227) p = 0.46), but women reported more slips (OR (95% CI): 0.45 (0.30–0.67); p<0.01). Only women reported serious injuries such as concussions and fractures. In summary, the rate of falls among young adults is influenced by physical activity level, drug intake, and gender. Quantifying and understanding these differences enhances knowledge of falls throughout life and is instrumental in developing interventions to prevent falls.