Slowing down in old age may point to a more sinister concern
It’s widely accepted that we tend to lose muscle strength and general mobility as we get older, which tends to make completing general tasks, and simply moving through the world, more difficult.
While these aches and pains are a common symptom of getting older, new research conducted by the Edith Cowan University (ECU) indicates this could also be a signal for another sinister health concern of ageing: late-life dementia.
Research teams from ECU’s Nutrition & Health Innovation Research Institute and Centre for Precision Health have investigated the link between muscle function and dementia, examining more than 1000 women with an average age of 75.
In collaboration with the University of Western Australia, the team measured the women’s grip strength and the time it took for them to rise from a chair, walk three metres, turn around and sit back down — known as a timed-up-and-go (TUG) test.
These tests were repeated after five years to monitor any loss of physical performance.
Over the next 15 years, almost 17 per cent of women involved in the study were found to have had a dementia event, categorised as a dementia-related hospitalisation or death.
The team found lower grip strength and slower TUG were significant risk factors for presenting with dementia, independent of genetic risk and lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol intake and physical activity levels.
The women with the weakest grip strength were found to be more than twice as likely to have a late-life dementia event than the strongest individuals.
A similar relationship emerged between TUG performance and dementia, with the slowest in their TUG test more than twice as likely to experience dementia than the quickest.
Senior researcher Dr Marc Sim said grip strength may be a measure of brain health due to the overlapping nature of cognitive and motor decline.
“Possibly due to a range of underlying similarities, grip strength may also present as a surrogate measure of cardiovascular disease, inflammation and frailty, which are known risk factors for dementia,” Dr Sim said.
Dr Sim went on to say that the findings could help healthcare professionals to identify dementia risk in patients earlier.
“Incorporating muscle function tests as part of dementia screening could be useful to identify high-risk individuals, who might then benefit from primary prevention programs aimed at preventing the onset of the condition such as a healthy diet and a physically active lifestyle.”
“The exciting findings were that decline in these measures was associated with substantially higher risk, suggesting that if we can halt this decline, we may be able to prevent late-life dementias.”
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