Aerobic Capacity at Middle Age Predicts Mortality in Swedish Men

In this Medical News Minute produced exclusively for Practical Cardiology, Dr Bobby Lazzara highlights a first-of-its-kind study from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden that evaluated the power of aerobic capacity (VO_{2 max}) to predict mortality in middle-aged men during 45 years of follow-up.

Published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, the study found that reduced aerobic capacity was associated with increased mortality among men born in 1913 and followed from age 54 years to age 99 years. The association was independent of traditional cardiovascular risk factors including smoking, blood pressure, and serum cholesterol. In fact, the predictive power of aerobic capacity in this population was second only to smoking.