How Life-Course Trajectories of Physical Activity Track With Cognitive Decline.
TL;DR
It is suggested that sustaining PA in mid-to-late life and preventing later life declines may help mitigate cognitive decline with aging.
Abstract
Background
Physical activity (PA) may help to delay or possibly prevent cognitive decline and dementia. However, few studies have adopted a life-course approach to prospectively examine repeated measures of PA in relation to cognitive decline.
Methods
Framingham Heart Study Offspring and Omni 1 participants without prevalent dementia who had ≥3 self-reported PA measures and ≥2 cognitive domain factor score measures were included (n = 2229). Memory, executive function, and language factor scores were previously derived using bifactor confirmatory factor analysis models. Group-based multitrajectory models characterized PA patterns over the adult life-course (ages 17-96 y). Linear mixed-effects models estimated annual changes in cognitive domain factor scores across PA trajectory groups over the same time period.
Results
We identified 4 PA trajectories: (1) stabilizers: decline from early adulthood through midlife and then stable after age 50 (n = 176), (2) decliners: constant decline over adulthood (n = 526), (3) reversers: increase from early adulthood through midlife and then decline after age 70 (n = 1145), and (4) plummeters: slow decline from early adulthood through midlife and then sharp decline after age 75 (n = 382; reference). Compared with the reference group, stabilizers had 0.012 SD/year (95% CI, 0.004-0.02) slower memory decline, 0.012 SD/year (95% CI, 0.005-0.02) slower executive function decline, and 0.015 SD/year (95% CI, 0.007-0.02) slower language decline. Decliners had slower cognitive decline across all domains, and reversers had slower language decline.
Conclusions
Our findings suggest that sustaining PA in mid-to-late life and preventing later life declines may help mitigate cognitive decline with aging.