The fear of falling among many elderly people can be just as devastating as falling itself, a Washington University School of Medicine study has found.

In a study of nearly 900 older people in the St. Louis area, researchers found that 35 percent of women expressed a fear of falling, more than double the rate of men. The fear of falling increases with age so that by age 80, half the women and a quarter of the men expressed such fears.

Of those who were "very fearful" of falling, 40 percent curtailed their social activities, compared to 29 percent of the elderly who were not afraid of falling, Cynthia Arfken reported in the American Journal of Public Health. Declining activity leads to depression and increasing frailty, she said.