Medical Xpress: Cognition and gait speed often decline together, study shows
Posted on: Thursday, May 7th, 2020
Do thinking and walking go hand in hand in determining the health course of senior adults? A study published by UT Health San Antonio researchers found that, indeed, the two functions often parallel each other in determining a person’s health trajectory.
The researchers analyzed data from 370 participants in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging (SALSA) and found that they grouped into three distinct trajectories. These classifications were based on the participants’ changes on a cognitive measure and a gait speed task over an average of 9½ years:
Stable cognition and gait class (65.4% of the participants).
Cognitive and physical vulnerability class (22.2%).
Physical vulnerability class (12.4%).
“In our community-based sample of Mexican American and European American older adults aged 65 to 74 years old at baseline, the majority of individuals began the study with higher scores in both domains, cognition and gait speed. During follow-up, this group demonstrated resilience to age-related declines and continued to be functionally independent,” said study senior author Helen Hazuda, Ph.D., professor in UT Health San Antonio’s Long School of Medicine and the principal investigator of SALSA.
“In contrast, one-fifth of individuals began the study with lower scores in cognition and gait speed. They experienced deterioration in each domain during the follow-up period,” Dr. Hazuda said.
The third group of individuals, termed the physical vulnerability class, demonstrated stable cognition throughout the study, but their gait speed slowed over time.
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