You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 75, Issue 1
  • Occupational and leisure-time physical activity and risk of disability pension: prospective data from the HUNT Study, Norway

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Workplace
Original Article
Occupational and leisure-time physical activity and risk of disability pension: prospective data from the HUNT Study, Norway
  1. Marius Steiro Fimland1,2,
  2. Gunnhild Vie1,
  3. Andreas Holtermann3,4,
  4. Steinar Krokstad1,5,
  5. Tom Ivar Lund Nilsen1
  1. 1 Department of Public Health and Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
  2. 2 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway
  3. 3 National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Copenhagen, Denmark
  4. 4 Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
  5. 5 Department of Public Health and Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, HUNT Research Centre, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Levanger, Norway
  1. Correspondence to Dr Marius Steiro Fimland, NTNU, Fakultet for medisin og helsevitenskap, Institutt for samfunnsmedisin og sykepleie, Postboks 8905, MTFS, 7491 Trondheim, Norway; marius.fimland{at}ntnu.no

Abstract

Objectives To prospectively investigate the association between occupational physical activity (OPA) and disability pension due to musculoskeletal cause, mental cause or any cause. We also examined the combined association of OPA and leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) with disability pension.

Methods A population-based cohort study in Norway on 32 362 persons aged 20–65 years with questionnaire data on OPA and LTPA that were followed up for incident disability pension through the National Insurance Database. We used Cox regression to estimate adjusted HRs with 95% CIs.

Results During a follow-up of 9.3 years, 3837 (12%) received disability pension. Compared with people with mostly sedentary work, those who performed much walking, much walking and lifting, and heavy physical work had HRs of 1.26 (95% CI 1.16 to 1.38), 1.44 (95% CI 1.32 to 1.58) and 1.48 (95% CI 1.33 to 1.70), respectively. These associations were stronger for disability pension due to musculoskeletal disorders, whereas there was no clear association between OPA and risk of disability pension due to mental disorders. People with high OPA and low LTPA had a HR of 1.77 (95% CI 1.58 to 1.98) for overall disability pension and HR of 2.56 (95% CI 2.10 to 3.11) for disability pension due to musculoskeletal disorders, versus low OPA and high LTPA.

Conclusions We observed a positive association between OPA and risk of disability pension due to all causes and musculoskeletal disorders, but not for mental disorders. Physical activity during leisure time reduced some, but not all of the unfavourable effect of physically demanding work on risk of disability pension.

  • Public health

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2017-104320

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Twitter @mariusfimland

    • Contributors MSF and TILN planned the study. MSF, TILN and GV analysed the data. MSF drafted the article. All authors interpreted the results, critically revised the article and approved the final version. MSF and TILN are the guarantors of the study.

    • Funding This study was in part financed by a grant from KLP—Kommunal Landspensjonskasse, Norway. MSF and GV are supported by researchgrants from the Research Council of Norway.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Ethics approval The Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics in Central Norway.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.