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Does symptomatic knee osteoarthritis increase the risk of all-cause mortality? Data from four international population-based longitudinal surveys of aging

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Abstract

Objective

This study aimed at examining the association between symptomatic knee osteoarthritis and all-cause mortality based on four population-based longitudinal surveys.

Method

Data were retrieved from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA), the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), and the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS). The association between symptomatic knee osteoarthritis and all-cause mortality over the 8- to 12-year follow-up period was assessed using Cox-proportional hazard models.

Results

In the entire sample of 59,522 participants (4823 with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis; 54,699 without symptomatic knee osteoarthritis [control group]; mean age: 61.8 years; female percentage: 55.3%), 8375 died (937 in the symptomatic knee osteoarthritis group, 7438 in the control group) during the follow-up period. Patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis had a higher risk of all-cause mortality than control group without adjusting for potential confounders in each survey, and the unadjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of all-cause mortality were 1.32 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.18 to 1.47) in ELSA, 1.40 (95%CI 1.24 to 1.56) in SHARE, 1.25 (95%CI 1.06 to 1.47) in KLoSA, and 1.65 (95%CI 1.31 to 2.07) in IFLS. However, with adjustment of potential confounders, the corresponding HRs dropped to 1.07 (95%CI 0.94 to 1.20) in ELSA, 1.08 (95%CI 0.97 to 1.22) in SHARE, 0.91 (95%CI 0.77 to 1.08) in KLoSA, and 0.89 (95%CI 0.66 to 1.21) in IFLS, respectively.

Conclusions

In these four population-based longitudinal studies, no association between symptomatic knee osteoarthritis and increased risk of all-cause mortality was observed after adjusting for potential confounders.

Key Points

• This study evaluated the association between symptomatic knee OA and the risk of all-cause mortality among the participants retrieved from four large population-based longitudinal studies across the world.

• No association between symptomatic knee osteoarthritis and increased risk of all-cause mortality was observed after considering potential confounders, and our findings were consistent with the results derived from four independent longitudinal studies.

• The present study included four international population-based longitudinal studies, comprising both developed and developing areas, which allowed the findings to be interpreted under larger circumstance.

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Data availability

The datasets during the current study available from the websites of each survey on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the support of Hunan Key Laboratory of Joint Degeneration and Injury and Hunan Engineering Research Center of Osteoarthritis.

Funding

This work was funded by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Central South University (2019zzts747); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81601941, 81772413, 81702207, 81702206); the Key Research and Development Program of Hunan Province (2018SK2070, 2018SK2073); the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Central South University (182130); the Young Investigator Grant of Xiangya Hospital, Central South University (2016Q03, 2016Q06); the Xiangya Clinical Big Data System Construction Project of Central South University (45); the Clinical Scientific Research Foundation of Xiangya Hospital, Central South University (2015L03); and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2017JJ3491, 2017JJ3492).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China

    Zidan Yang & Tubao Yang

  2. Hunan Key Laboratory of Joint Degeneration and Injury, Changsha, Hunan, China

    Guanghua Lei & Xiaoxiao Li

  3. Department of Orthopaedics, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China

    Guanghua Lei, Yilun Wang, Zikun Xie, Xiurui Zhang, Yuchen He & Yilin Xiong

  4. National Clinical Research Center of Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China

    Guanghua Lei

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Contributions

YX and TY are joint corresponding authors. ZY, YX, and TY conceived the study. ZY, YX, and TY were responsible for conception of the study and drafted the manuscript. GL, YX, and TY were responsible for design of the study. XL, ZX, XZ, YH, contributed to preparation and data analysis. YW, TY, YX, and GL contributed to revision of the manuscript. All the authors contributed to the interpretation of the data and critically reviewed the manuscript for publication. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yilin Xiong or Tubao Yang.

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval for all surveys were granted from the corresponding ethics committees: the Multicentre Research and Ethics Committee for ELSA, the Ethics Committee of the University of Mannheim for SHARE, the Seoul National University Hospital’s Institutional Review Board for KLoSA, and the ethics review boards of RAND and University of Gadjah Mada in Indonesia for IFLS. All participants provided written informed consent to participate in these surveys.

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Yang, Z., Lei, G., Li, X. et al. Does symptomatic knee osteoarthritis increase the risk of all-cause mortality? Data from four international population-based longitudinal surveys of aging. Clin Rheumatol 38, 3253–3259 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-019-04672-5

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