Alejandra Araya, MICARE research associate, together with Evelyn Iriarte, MICARE research assistant, conducted this study that seeks to compare the relationship between the level of physical activity of elderly persons and the fear of falling.

For this purpose, a descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with 113 elderly people living in community housing (45 sedentary and 48 active), users of an ambulatory care centre of the private health care system with a geriatric program in Santiago, Chile.

The results reveal that sedentary older people have significantly higher scores on the Yesavage depression scale compared to active older people. As for the fear of falling, the sedentary group had a slightly higher score than the active group (12 vs. 11), although this was not statistically significant.