Johns Hopkins Medicine developed formula to calculate death risk

Washington: Your performance on a treadmill may tell how long you are going to live, a new large-scale study has claimed.

Analysing data from 58,000 heart stress tests, cardiologists at the Johns Hopkins Medicine have developed a formula that estimates one’s risk of dying over a decade based on a person’s ability to exercise on a treadmill.

The new algorithm, dubbed the FIT Treadmill Score can gauge long-term death risk in anyone based solely on treadmill exercise performance. In addition to age and gender, the formula factors in peak heart rate reached during intense exercise and ability to tolerate physical exertion as measured by so-called metabolic equivalents, or METs, a gauge of how much energy the body expends during exercise.

Experts analysed information on 58,020 people, ages 18 to 96, from Detroit, Michigan, who underwent standard exercise stress tests between 1991 and 2009 for evaluation of chest pain, fainting or dizziness. Experts tracked how many of the participants within each fitness level died from any cause over the next decade. The results show that fitness level as measured by METs and peak heart rate reached during exercise were the greatest indicators of death risk.