Adults ages 80 and older with unusually fast gait had about half the cognitive impairment risk as others, data from several studies suggested.Earlier research showed that super movers -- people 80 and older who walk as fast as people 30 years younger -- had a lower burden of disease, a healthier lifestyle, and a younger biological age.Findings suggested that mobility may reflect broad resilience across brain, cardiovascular, and muscle systems.
Super movers -- adults 80 and older who walk as fast as people 30 years younger -- had lower risks of cognitive impairment, data from multiple cohorts suggested.
Across five cohorts in the Health and Retirement Study International Network of Studies, super movers had a lower risk of incident cognitive impairment (HR 0.49, 95% CI 0.28-0.71) compared with non-super movers over follow-up periods that ranged from 3.4 to 5.4 years, reported Joe Verghese, MD, MS, of the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University in New York, and colleagues.
In the LonGenity study, super movers also showed slower cognitive decline and preserved hippocampal volume in specific subfields, Verghese and co-authors wrote in Neurology.
Autopsy data from the Rush Memory and Aging Project suggested that super movers had a trend toward better cognition before they died and a lower prevalence of clinically diagnosed Alzheimer's disease and other dementias compared with non-super movers. There were no differences in any of the Alzheimer's or dementia pathologies examined.
