The message to the general population is to maintain fitness in old age would have important implications and preserve life and function (muscle).

The expert said the study, published in BMJ, also suggests that a test of walking speed can know better the health status of older patients.

Previous studies have associated the slow gait with an increased risk of death in a given period, as well as to falls and other adverse health consequences, but none had shown the highest risk if the concentrated heart disease or other cause .

The investigation of five-year, part of the trial of Inserm called Three City Study, included more than 3,200 men and women with relatively good physical fitness, between 65 and 85 years who resided in three cities in France.

At baseline in 1999, the team used questionnaires and interviews in person to evaluate the health of each participant. Then, clocked the speed of each participant to walk as fast as possible without running, in a corridor.

In five years, 209 participants died (mostly from cancer, followed by heart disease and infectious diseases course and other causes), the mortality rate was 7 percent.

In the third who had walked more slowly (5.4 km/h or less for men and 4.8 km/h for women), the mortality rate was 44 percent higher than the two thirds of participants who had walked faster.

Mortality from myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and associated causes was 2.9 times more common in the slowest third of participants than among the fastest two thirds.

The increase in mortality from heart disease was seen in men and women was not associated with age or physical activity of participants.

There was no relationship between walking speed and other causes of death, including cancer.

What, then, what explains the relationship between walking and slow death from heart disease?

One possibility, is that the same risk factors that increase the risk of developing the disease, like high blood pressure and diabetes, also produce “silent stroke”, which prevent walking fast. That idea “deserves further studies to confirm it.

In a related editorial, Drs H. Rowan Harwood, Queen’s Medical Center in Nottingham, England, and Simon P. Conroy, University of Leicester, also in England, wrote that the loss of walking speed problems may appear in different organ systems, from the bones, muscles and lungs to the brain.

Some of these systems are linked through vascular disorders and smoking.