Gender, nutritional status and disability-free life expectancy among older people in Santiago, Chile

Abstract

© 2018 Moreno et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Background This study was aimed to estimate life expectancy (LE), disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) and disabled life expectancy (DLE) among older adults from Santiago, Chile, and to determine the existence of differences by gender and by body mass index (BMI) categories in these indicators. Methods A sample of 1216 people aged 60 or more, from the Chilean cohort of the Study of Health, Ageing and Well-Being was recruited in 2000; two follow-up assessments were carried out in a 10-year period. Functional limitation was assessed through self-report of difficulties in activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living and mobility. BMI was determined with measured weight and height. Multistate life tables were emp