Available online http://arthritis-research.com/content/9/2/R34 Research article Open Access Vol No Relationship between physical activity and stiff or painful joints in mid-aged women and older women: a 3-year prospective study Kristiann C Heesch1, Yvette D Miller1,2 and Wendy J Brown1 1School 2School of Human Movement Studies, The University of Queensland, Blair Drive, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Campbell Road, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia Corresponding author: Kristiann C Heesch, kheesch@hms.uq.edu.au Received: 15 Aug 2006 Revisions requested: 14 Sep 2006 Revisions received: 14 Feb 2007 Accepted: 29 Mar 2007 Published: 29 Mar 2007 Arthritis Research & Therapy 2007, 9:R34 (doi:10.1186/ar2154) This article is online at: http://arthritis-research.com/content/9/2/R34 © 2007 Heesch et al., licensee BioMed Central Ltd This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited Abstract This prospective study examined the association between physical activity and the incidence of self-reported stiff or painful joints (SPJ) among mid-age women and older women over a 3year period Data were collected from cohorts of mid-age (48– 55 years at Time 1; n = 4,780) and older women (72–79 years at Time 1; n = 3,970) who completed mailed surveys years apart for the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health Physical activity was measured with the Active Australia questions and categorized based on metabolic equivalent value minutes per week: none (