In a new study from Florida Atlantic University, researchers confirm that aerobic physical activity and exercise training may delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
In aging humans, aerobic exercise training increases gray and white matter volume, enhances blood flow, and improves memory function.
The ability to measure the effects of exercise on systemic biomarkers associated with risk for AD and relating them to key metabolomic alterations may further prevention, monitoring, and treatment efforts.
In the study, the team tested the hypotheses that three specific biomarkers, which are implicated in learning and memory, would increase in older adults following exercise training and correlate with cognition and metabolomics markers of brain health.
They analyzed blood samples of 23 late middle-aged adults, with familial and genetic risk for AD (mean age 65 years old, 50% female).
The participants were divided into two groups: usual physical activity and enhanced physical activity.
The enhanced physical activity group underwent 26 weeks of supervised treadmill training. Blood samples for both groups were taken at baseline and after 26 weeks.
The team found that a blood marker CTSB level was increased following this 26-week structured aerobic exercise training in older adults at risk for AD.
Verbal learning and memory correlated positively with change in CTSB.
This suggests that CTSB may be useful as a marker for cognitive changes relevant to hippocampal function after exercise in a population at risk for dementia.
CTSB is secreted from muscle into circulation after exercise and is linked to memory function and adult hippocampal neurogenesis.
The team says CTSB can work as an exercise biomarker for evaluating the effect of lifestyle interventions on brain function.
It can measure the effect of exercise interventions on Alzheimer’s-related outcomes quickly and at low cost could be used to inform disease progression and to develop novel therapeutic targets.
If you care about dementia and your health, please read studies about this mental issue could predict dementia years before other symptoms and findings of this kind of work could increase your dementia risk by more than 50%.
For more information about dementia prevention and treatment, please see recent studies about a new way to detect early dementia in time for intervention and results showing that a new way to early detect and distinct different forms of dementia.
The study is published in Frontiers in Endocrinology. One author of the study is Henriette van Praag, Ph.D.
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