Women who consistently met physical activity guidelines throughout middle age had half the risk of dying from any cause compared to women who remained inactive, according to a new paper publishing March 26th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Binh Nguyen of the University of Sydney, Australia, and colleagues.
Physical activity is known to provide numerous health benefits and to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and premature mortality. However, most prior studies have measured physical activity at only a single point in time, which fails to capture how activity levels change over time.
In the new study, researchers used data from 11,169 women born between 1946 and 1951 who enrolled in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. Participants were surveyed nine times between 1996 and 2019, approximately every three years. Data was collected on how often the women met the World Health Organization's recommendation of at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per week.
The researchers found that consistently meeting MVPA recommendations throughout midlife was associated with a relative risk of all-cause mortality that was half that of those who consistently did not meet the recommendations (relative risk: 0.50). In absolute terms, the incidence of death was 5.3% among women who consistently met guidelines versus 10.4% among those who consistently did not. The magnitude of effect appeared similar or even stronger for cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality, though greater uncertainty in those estimates made the findings less conclusive, possibly because fewer deaths from those causes were observed. The evidence for benefits of starting to meet recommendations later in midlife—at age 55, 60, or 65—rather than throughout all of midlife was also uncertain and inconclusive.
The study was limited by the fact that physical activity was self-reported and that the study sample may not be representative of all mid-aged Australian women.
"This study supports the growing evidence that maintaining an active lifestyle in midlife provides health benefits," the authors say. "Women should be encouraged to meet physical activity recommendations throughout mid-age to derive these benefits."
Nguyen adds, "Staying active throughout midlife can make a real difference for women's long-term health. Our study shows that maintaining recommended levels of physical activity over multiple years helps protect against early death."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: https://plos.io/4rlY7N
Citation: Nguyen B, Owen KB, Luo M, Brown W, Mielke GI, Clare PJ, et al. (2026) Physical activity across mid-life and mortality outcomes in Australian women: A target trial emulation using a prospective cohort. PLoS Med 23(3): e1004976. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004976
Author countries: Australia
Funding: The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health. GIM is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Grant (APP2008702). DD is funded by an Emerging Leader Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (APP2009254) and an Early-Mid Career Researcher Grant under the New South Wales Cardiovascular Research Capacity Program. URLs: https://www.nhmrc.gov.au and https://www.medicalresearch.nsw.gov.au . The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
