An Initial Assessment of Secular Trends in Muscular Strength Among Children, Adolescents, and Adults Across the Lifespan: National Sample of Americans.

PURPOSE: Adequate muscular strength has important implications for morbidity and early mortality prevention. There are no data on the recent trends in muscular strength across lifespan, which was this study's purpose.

DESIGN: Cross-sectional.

SETTING: 2011 to 2012 and 2013 to 2014 waves of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey across the United States.

PARTICIPANTS: The analyzed sample included 12 295 participants aged 6 to 85 years.

MEASURES: Muscular strength was assessed via a handgrip dynamometer.

ANALYSIS: Adjusted Wald test.

RESULTS: As expected, men (vs women) had greater grip strength, with grip strength declining as age increased. Central to the focus of this study, there were no changes in absolute or relative grip strength across the waves for any of the evaluated populations (considering age, gender, and race-ethnicity).

CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that muscular grip strength, across all age, gender, and race-ethnicity populations in the United States, has not changed in the 2 successive 2-year time windows, contained over a 4-year period.