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Gender differences in health-related quality of life among the elderly: The role of objective functional capacity and chronic conditions
- Authors:
- ORFILA Francesc, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Social Science and Medicine, 9(63), November 2006, pp.2367-2380.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
Although worse Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL) among women has been widely described, it remains unclear whether this is due to differential reporting patterns, or whether there is a real difference in health status. The objective of this study was to evaluate to what extent gender differences in HRQL among the elderly might be explained by differences in performance-based functional capacity and chronic conditions, using the conceptual model of health outcomes as proposed by Wilson and Cleary. Data are from a cross-sectional home survey of 872 surviving individuals from an elderly cohort representative of Barcelona's general population. Complete valid data for these analyses were obtained from 62% of the subjects (n=544). The evaluation included the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP), a generic measure of HRQL; three performance-based functional capacity tests (balance, chair-stand, and walking tests); and a standardized list of self-reported chronic conditions. A series of multiple linear regression models were built with the total NHP score as the dependent variable, with gender, socio-demographic information, performance-based functional capacity and chronic conditions included sequentially, as independent variables. Women (65.4%) showed worse results than men on HRQL and functional capacity. Functional capacity, arthritis, back pain, diabetes, and depression were significantly associated to the NHP total score in the final regression model, which explained 42% of the variance. Raw differences by gender in the total NHP score were 11.5 points, but decreased to a non-significant 3.2 points after adjusting for all the other variables. In conclusion, our data suggest that worse reported HRQL in elderly women is mainly due to a higher prevalence of disability and chronic conditions.