Handgrip Strength May Offer Clues About Cognitive Function in People With Mood Disorders

Handgrip strength may provide a useful indicator of cognitive impairment in people with major depression and bipolar disorder, according to astudy inJAMA Psychiatry. Joseph Firth, Ph.D., of the University of Western Sydney and colleagues found that greater grip strength in individuals with major depression and bipolar disorder was associated with better performance on measures of reasoning, reaction time, and memory.Firth and colleagues analyzed data from the UK Biobank —a nationwide, health-oriented, cohort study conducted across the United Kingdom. The final analysis included 110,067 people who had their handgrip strength evaluated (each participant received a single, maximum score indicating the greatest strength for each hand). The participants also performed a variety of cognitive functioning tasks on a computer (these tasks evaluated visuospatial memory, reaction time, reasoning, prospective memory, and numeric memory).Of the group, 85,893 participants had no indication of any mood disorders, 22,699 reported recurrent major depression, and 1,475 reported bipolar disorder (type I or type II). The mean age of the healthy control, bipolar disorder, and major depression samples was 53.7 years, 54.4 years, and 55.5 years, respectively.In participants with major depression and no indication of any mood disorders, greater handgrip strength was a significant predictor of better cognitive performance in all five domains: visual memory, reaction time, reasoning, number mem...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: bipolar disorder cognition depression hand grip strength JAMA Psychiatry Joseph Firth Source Type: research