Walking into aging: real-world mobility patterns and digital benchmarks from the InCHIANTI Study

Albites-Sanabria, Jose; Palumbo, Pierpaolo; Bandinelli, Stefania; D'Ascanio, Ilaria; Mellone, Sabato; Paraschiv-Ionescu, Anisoara; Küderle, Arne; Cereatti, Andrea; Del Din, Silvia; Kluge, Felix; Gazit, Eran; Jansen, Carl-Philipp; Delgado Ortiz, Laura; García Aymerich, Judith; Rochester, Lynn; Klenk, Jochen; Ferrucci, Luigi; Becker, Clemens; Chiari, Lorenzo; Palmerini, Luca

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41514-025-00245-w

Walking into aging: real-world mobility patterns and digital benchmarks from the InCHIANTI Study

Citation

Albites-Sanabria J, Palumbo P, Bandinelli S, D'Ascanio I, Mellone S, Paraschiv-Ionescu A, et al. Walking into aging: real-world mobility patterns and digital benchmarks from the InCHIANTI Study. NPJ Aging. 2025 Jul 5;11(1):60. DOI: 10.1038/s41514-025-00245-w

Abstract

Mobility is a cornerstone of health and quality of life, particularly in older adults. Digital mobility outcomes (DMOs) from real-world walking data offer crucial insights into the functional status and early markers of mobility decline. This study provides reference values for walking activity, pace, rhythm, and gait bout-to-bout variability in community-dwelling older adults and evaluates the effects of age, sex, height, and weight on these parameters. Using data from 200 older adults (aged 65-94 years) from the InCHIANTI Study and applying the Mobilise-D computational pipeline, we analyzed real-world walking over a week. Significant differences by sex and age were found, with males showing higher walking activity in younger age groups (65-74 and 75-84 years) but not in the oldest group (85-94 years). Additionally, we observed non-linear trends in mobility metrics with age, indicating an accelerated reduction in mobility at certain age ranges. These findings underscore the importance of monitoring real-world walking data to pinpoint critical periods of mobility decline and guide targeted interventions. This work offers valuable benchmarks for clinical assessments and future research.