TREATMENT OF COGNITIVE DISORDER IN THE ELDERLY: MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT AND DEMENTIA

Abstract

The best socio-sanitary conditions of the 21st century lead to an aging of society. In advanced age, the appearance of cognitive deterioration is more frequent, which raises the need to design therapeutic strategies to mitigate it. In addition to drug treatment, there are other interventions such as the type of diet, cognitive training, music therapy, acupuncture, physical exercise, etc. Due to the scientific evidence and the ease of practicing physical exercise as a therapeutic intervention, we propose to carry out a systematic bibliographic review on this treatment. Therefore, our objective is to study the efficacy of physical exercise in mild cognitive impairment and dementia. To this end, a systematic literature search was carried out in PubMed database using the MeSH terms: „Cognitive Dysfunction”, „Dementia”, „Alzheimer Disease”, „Therapeutics”, „Exercise”, „Exercise Therapy” and „Aged”. We define efficacy in terms of improvement in global cognitive status or by cognitive domains after the application of the intervention with physical activity and by applying different scales to assess cognition. It is concluded that aerobic physical activity is the most effective treatment for both mild cognitive impairment and dementia, the most favored cognitive domains being memory, global cognition and executive function. This therapy involves few adverse effects. More randomized controlled studies are needed in order to provide more scientific evidence for these results.