Abstract
BackgroundCognitive reserve explains why subjects with more years of education, professional achievement, or participation in recreational activities show less cognitive decline with aging. We hypothesize that levels of recreational travel, education, occupation, systemic health, physical performance, and current cognitive activity levels affect the trajectory of cognitive function in older, healthy people in Poland.Materials and MethodsHealthy, older people (N = 205) were examined and followed-up at 2 years. Participants completed physical and cognitive function assessments: including the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and its two subtests Delayed Recall (DR) and Verbal Fluency (VF), and Trail Making Test Part B (TMT B). Factors associated with cognitive functioning were also examined.ResultsThe MMSE result significantly decreased over 2 years. No significant decrease in other cognitive tests was noted. However, the trajectory of cognitive tests results varied between individual participants. Percentage of variance of change was explained by the following predictors: 21 in MMSE, 24 in MoCA, 8 in DR, 25 in VF, and 24 in TMT B. Age and the presence of varicose veins were significantly linked to negative changes in MMSE and MoCA scores, while working in a professional occupational status associated with a higher score. The subgroup with varicose veins did worse on the Delayed Recall subtest of MoCA.ConclusionCognitive reserve could be extended by proxies of reserve that are related to systemic health and travel activity. The latter is a combination of social, physical, and cognitive activity and potentially might serve as an intervention to improve cognitive function in older people. However, due to the limitations of this study, results should be interpreted with caution and needs to be replicated in the further studies.
Highlights
Aging is an unavoidable process in all living organisms
We showed that the presence of varicose veins links to a greater decline in Mini–Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores over 2 years, while high occupational status was related to better results
Age and the presence of varicose veins associated with declining MMSE and MoCA scores over 2 years, while high occupational status was linked positively to a slower decline in test scores
Summary
Aging is an unavoidable process in all living organisms. Discrepancies between biological and recorded age are often observed (Mianowany et al, 2004). Biological age, linked to body functionality is associated with how subjects adapt to the aging process and is a better indication of age than chronological age. The cognitive reserve hypothesis assumes that individual differences in cognitive performance are associated with biological differences in the brain and how neurons are coping with the aging process and is linked to the depletion of cognitive resources (Stern, 2002; Jodzio, 2012). Cognitive reserve explains why subjects with more years of education, professional achievement, or participation in recreational activities show less cognitive function decline during aging (Tucker and Stern, 2011). Cognitive reserve explains why subjects with more years of education, professional achievement, or participation in recreational activities show less cognitive decline with aging. We hypothesize that levels of recreational travel, education, occupation, systemic health, physical performance, and current cognitive activity levels affect the trajectory of cognitive function in older, healthy people in Poland
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