Riding a bike comes with a lot fitness benefits for older adults and their aging joints, but it also comes with a lot of risks, Newsmax reported.
Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco found that there was a spike in bicycle-related injuries and hospital admissions of adults in the United States between 1998 and 2013, with the increase in injuries driven by more injuries among adults older than 45 years of age, CNN reported.
"The rise in cycling in adults over 45 appears to be driving both the increase in injuries and [hospital] admissions, suggesting that older individuals are at increased risk for sustaining severe injury while cycling," Dr. Benjamin Breyer, lead researcher of the study, told CBS News.
For the study, Breyer and his colleagues analyzed data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), a national probability sample of approximately 100 emergency departments that gathers product-related injury data. The researchers queried the NEISS for injuries associated with bicycles from 1998 to 2013. The number of bicycle-related injuries in adults age 18 years or older was recorded in two-year intervals.
They found that bike injuries among all adults 18 and over increased by 28 percent; the incidence of hospital admissions increased by 120 percent. The percentage of injured cyclists with head injuries increased from 10 percent to 16 percent. Overall, 35 percent of injuries occurred in women, with no significant change in sex ratio of injuries over time.
The proportion of injuries occurring in individuals older than 45 years increased 81 percent, from 23 percent to 42 percent, and the proportion of hospital admissions in individuals older than 45 years increased 66 percent, from 39 percent to 65 percent.
"These injury trends likely reflect the trends in overall bicycle ridership in the United States in which multiple sources show an increase in ridership in adults older than 45 years," the authors write.
The findings are detailed in the journal JAMA.
