Chronic pain increases the risk of motoric cognitive risk syndrome at 4 years of follow‐up: evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

Abstract Background and purpose Slower gait speed and subjective cognitive concerns are characteristics of the motoric cognitive risk (MCR) syndrome. This study aimed to examine if changes in pain may be hallmarks of early MCR, through investigating the magnitude of the association of chronic pain and the risk of MCR at 4 years follow‐up. Methods In total, 3711 participants without dementia or any mobility disability aged ≥60 years were studied, including 1413 with chronic pain, enrolled in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, a prospective cohort study. MCR assessed at wave 1 (2011) and wave 3 (2015) was used as the exposure. Cox regression analysis was used to examine the longitudinal association between chronic pain and MCR after adjusting for individual factors, behaviors/physiology factors and societal factors. Four years later, the incident MCR was evaluated. Results After adjusting for individual factors, chronic pain was found to increase the risk of MCR development over time by about 1.5 times (hazard ratio 1.562, 95% confidence interval 1.228–1.986; p < 0.001) and to be linked with incident MCR at baseline (odds ratio 1.397, 95% confidence interval 1.149–1.698; p < 0.001). These associations remained substantial when behaviors/physiology factors and societal factors were taken into account in the analytical models. Conclusions The findings of our study imply that incident MCR may be exacerbated by chronic pain. Further exploration is required to find out whether chronic pain is a modifiable risk factor for MCR.