Abstract
The aim of the study was to test the hypothesis that higher childhood cognitive ability is associated with reduced risk of decline in physical capability in late midlife. Participants were 1954 men and women from the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development with complete data on cognitive ability at age of 15 years and measures of grip strength and chair rise speed at ages of 53 and 60 to 64 years. Using multinomial logistic regression, associations of childhood cognitive ability with categories of change in grip strength and chair rise speed (i.e., decline, stable high, stable low, reference) were investigated. Adjustments were made for potential confounders from early life and adult mediators including health behaviors, educational level, and cognitive ability at age of 53 years. Higher childhood cognitive scores were associated with reduced risks of decline in grip strength and chair rise speed, for example, the sex-adjusted relative-risk ratio of decline (versus reference) in grip strength per 1SD increase in childhood cognitive score was 0.82 (95% confidence interval = 0.73-0.92). Higher childhood cognitive scores were also associated with reduced risk of stable low and increased likelihood of stable high chair rise speed. These findings suggest that childhood cognitive ability may be related to decline in physical capability in late midlife. A number of life course pathways are implicated, including those linking childhood and adult cognitive ability. Future research aiming to identify new opportunities to prevent or minimize age-related declines in physical capability may benefit from considering the potential role of neurodevelopmental as well as neurodegenerative pathways.
Highlights
There is increasing research interest in the influence of neurodegeneration on age-related declines in mobility and other aspects of physical capability [1,2] and a growing body of empirical evidence highlighting its importance [3]
Changes in Grip Strength In a sex-adjusted model, higher childhood cognitive scores were associated with lower risk of decline in grip strength (RRR of decline [versus reference] per 1SD increase in cognitive ability = 0.82, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.73–0.92) (Table 2)
Consistent with the finding that higher childhood socioeconomic position and higher verbal memory scores at age of 53 years were associated with lower risk of decline in grip strength (Table S3, Supplemental Digital Content 1, http:// links.lww.com/PSYMED/A396), adjustment for these covariates had the greatest impact
Summary
There is increasing research interest in the influence of neurodegeneration on age-related declines in mobility and other aspects of physical capability [1,2] and a growing body of empirical evidence highlighting its importance [3]. A few existing studies have examined associations between cognitive ability in earlier life, a commonly used marker of neurodevelopment, and objective measures of physical capability including walking speed, grip strength, and chair rise time at mean ages of assessment from 50 to 79 [4,6,7,8,9,10]. Most of these studies present evidence of association between higher cognitive scores in earlier life and higher levels of physical capability in mid to late adulthood. All previous analyses that have examined objective measures of physical capability have done so at only one time point and so cannot distinguish between the potential influences of neurodevelopment on the levels of physical capability achieved by midlife and longer-term influences on subsequent age-related declines
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