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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Physical exercise at midlife and risk of dementia three decades later
— a population-based study of Swedish twins | | Author(s) | Ross Andel, Michael Crowe, Nancy L Pedersen |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, vol 63A, no 1, January 2008 |
| Pages | pp 62-66 |
| Source | http://www.geron.org |
| Keywords | Exercise ; Dementia ; Twins ; Correlation ; Longitudinal surveys ; Sweden. |
| Annotation | With the number of people with dementia increasing, identifying potential protective factors has become more important. The authors explored the association between physical exercise at midlife and subsequent risk of dementia among members of the HARMONY study. Measures of exercise were obtained by the Swedish Twin Registry an average of 31 years prior to dementia assessment. Dementia was diagnosed using a two-stage procedure: screening for cognitive impairment, followed by full clinical evaluation. The authors used two study designs: case-control analyses included 264 cases with dementia (176 had Alzheimer's disease) and 2870 controls; and co-twin control analyses included 90 twin pairs discordant for dementia. In case-control analyses, controlling for age, sex, education, diet (eating fruit and vegetables), smoking, drinking alcohol, body mass index, and angina, light exercise such as gardening or walking and regular exercise involving sports were associated with reduced odds of dementia compared to hardly any exercise (odds ratio [OR] = 0.63, 95% confidence interval [CI]), for light exercise (OR 0.43-0.91, 95% CI), and for regular exercise (OR = 0.34, 95% CI, 0.16-0.72). Findings were similar for Alzheimer's disease alone. In co-twin control analyses, controlling for education, the association between higher levels of exercise and lower odds of dementia approached significance (OR = 0.50, 95% CI, 0.23-1.06; p =.072). Thus, exercise at midlife may reduce the odds of dementia in older adulthood. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-091214201 A |
| Classmark | CEA: EA: SVR: 49: 3J: 76P |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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