Description
With the older population rapidly increasing and expected to triple in Mexico by 2050, falls are an important public health issue to further study. Consequences from falls include morbidity, mortality, disabilities, fractures, fear of falling, and a decline in independence; older adults are at higher risk for morbidity from falls. There are insufficient studies examining risk factors of falls in Mexico. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between body mass index and the number of fall experienced among older adults that participated in the 2012 Mexican Health and Aging Study. Ordinal regression analyses was carried out to assess the relationship between BMI and number of falls, after adjusting for potentially confounding variables. Results are from our study sample of 1,040 older adults with mean age 69.37±8.10, and 621 (59.71%) were female. In the two years prior to data collection, 159 (15.29%) respondents had reported experiencing one fall and 295 (28.37%) had reported experiencing two or more falls. Our exposure of interest shows that 405 (38.94%) had overweight BMI and 364 (35.00%) had obese BMI. Multivariate ordinal regression analysis showed that increased BMI (overweight and obese) was associated with decreased number of falls experienced by older adults when compared to the normal BMI group. The odds of fewer falls for the overweight BMI range is 1.387 (95% CI 1.027 – 1.873) for the normal BMI range. The odds of fewer falls for the obese BMI group is 1.265 (95% CI 0.932 – 1.716) compared to the normal BMI group. Results were not statistically significant (p=0.0963). This study found that those in the overweight BMI and obese BMI groups experienced less falls than those in the normal BMI range. Overweight individuals were less likely to experience falls compared to the normal BMI group. Factors that were significantly associated with number of falls experienced were age, sex, marital status, general health status, and floor material in residence; however, sex was the only confounding variable. Future studies should incorporate validated scales for measuring falls accurately and utilizing the same definition of falls across the study.
