People who carry extra weight early in life may be at an increased risk of mobility problems in old age, even if they eventually lose the weight, the results of a new study indicate.

US researchers looked at almost 3,000 adults with an average age of 74. All participants were living in the community and were free from any life-threatening illnesses at the start of the study. They also had no problems with mobility at this point.

Mobility problems were defined as a difficulty with walking a quarter of a mile or climbing 10 steps. Information on the development of any mobility problems and limitations was then collected every six months over the next seven years.

Using the participants’ body mass index (BMI) measurements, the researchers found that women who were overweight or obese from their mid-20s to their 70s were almost three times more likely to develop mobility problems than women who maintained a normal weight throughout this time.

The risk for men was slightly less – they were about 1.6 times more likely to develop mobility problems.

The researchers also found that women who were obese at the age of 50, but not in their 70s, were 2.7 times more likely to develop mobility limitations compared to women who were not obese throughout. Meanwhile men who were obese at 50, but not in their 70s, were 1.8 times more likely to develop mobility problems than men who never carried any extra weight.

“Carrying extra weight can strain joints, hinder exercise and lead to chronic conditions, such as diabetes, arthritis and heart disease, that are directly related to the development of mobility limitations,” explained lead investigator, Dr Denise Houston of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina.

She said that dropping weight later in life may lead to problems with mobility because weight loss at this time of life ‘is usually involuntary and the result of an underlying chronic condition’.

According to Dr Houston, the results are significant because of the fact that people are living longer, therefore there is now a much larger population of older people who may potentially face these problems.

“In both men and women, being overweight or obese put them at greater risk of developing mobility limitations in old age, and the longer they had been overweight or obese, the greater the risk. The data suggest that interventions to prevent overweight and obesity in young and middle-aged adults may be useful in preventing or delaying the onset of mobility limitations later in life,” she added.

Details of these findings are published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.