Abstract
BackgroundBesides physical activity as a target for dementia prevention, sedentary behaviour is hypothesized to be a potential target in its own right. The rising number of persons with dementia and lack of any effective treatment highlight the urgency to better understand these modifiable risk factors. Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether higher levels of sedentary behaviour are associated with reduced global cognitive functioning and slower cognitive decline in older persons without dementia.MethodsWe used five population cohorts from Greece, Australia, USA, Japan, and Singapore (HELIAD, PATH, SALSA, SGS, and SLAS2) from the Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium. In a coordinated analysis, we assessed the relationship between sedentary behaviour and global cognitive function with the use of linear mixed growth model analysis (mean follow-up range of 2.0–8.1 years).ResultsBaseline datasets combined 10,450 older adults without dementia with a mean age range between cohorts of 66.7–75.1 years. After adjusting for multiple covariates, no cross-sectional association between sedentary behaviour and cognition was found in four studies. One association was detected where more sedentary behaviour was cross-sectionally linked to higher cognition levels (SLAS2, B = 0.118 (0.075; 0.160), P < 0.001). Longitudinally, there were no associations between baseline sedentary behaviour and cognitive decline (P > 0.05).ConclusionsOverall, these results do not suggest an association between total sedentary time and lower global cognition in older persons without dementia at baseline or over time. We hypothesize that specific types of sedentary behaviour may differentially influence cognition which should be investigated further. For now, it is, however, too early to establish undifferentiated sedentary time as a potential effective target for minimizing cognitive decline in older adults without dementia.
Highlights
The rising number of persons with dementia and the lack of effective treatments highlight the urgency for modifiable risk factors to be better understood, as these might account for around 30% of the population risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease [1,2,3]
Recent work suggested that sedentary behaviour (SB; low-intensity activities with a Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) of < 1.5) [6], which can be regarded as the other key component of physical inactivity, might be a target in its own right, due to its strong association with cardiovascular disease risk [7, 8]
Whilst most research focused on Physical activity (PA) examined moderate-to-vigorous intensity PAs (MVPA; activities with a MET of ≥ 3.0, different from light PA which are activities with a MET of 1.5–2.9 [6]), older adults only spend 0.2 h per day on such activities, whereas SB is more prevalent in older adults with an average of 9.2 h per day [9,10,11]
Summary
The rising number of persons with dementia and the lack of effective treatments highlight the urgency for modifiable risk factors to be better understood, as these might account for around 30% of the population risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease [1,2,3]. The rising number of persons with dementia and lack of any effective treatment highlight the urgency to better understand these modifiable risk factors. We aimed to investigate whether higher levels of sedentary behaviour are associated with reduced global cognitive functioning and slower cognitive decline in older persons without dementia. Conclusions Overall, these results do not suggest an association between total sedentary time and lower global cognition in older persons without dementia at baseline or over time. We hypothesize that specific types of sedentary behaviour may differentially influence cognition which should be investigated further For it is, too early to establish undifferentiated sedentary time as a potential effective target for minimizing cognitive decline in older adults without dementia
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
