The Interactions of Frailty, Exercise, and Risk of Dementia

Frailty is a consequence of advanced aging, a categorization applied to an individual who is greatly physically weakened by the accumulation of cell and tissue damage and its many downstream consequences. Frailty is generally described as some combination of the loss of muscle mass and strength known as sarcopenia, fragility of bones caused by osteoporosis, and a faltering immune system that no longer adequately protects against pathogens, coupled with outcomes such as weakness, exhaustion, and weight loss. The underlying root causes of frailty are also the causes of other age-related conditions, and it is thus expected to find that frail individuals also exhibit a greater incidence of a range of conditions, such as dementia. How is it that some people can have a brain full of plaques and tangles, yet somehow fend off dementia? Researchers analyzed postmortem data from 456 participants in the Rush Memory and Aging Project (MAP). At their last visit before death, 242 had a diagnosis of possible or probable Alzheimer's disease (AD). Using information gathered from past clinical visits, the researchers calculated a frailty index for each based on a 41-item questionnaire that assessed age-related symptoms, morbidities, and functional deficits. The final score represented a fraction of the total possible deficits. For this cohort, who averaged 89.7 years of age at death, the mean frailty index was 0.42, right at the threshold between moderately and severely frail. ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs