Pharmacy Daily | Exercise for grey matter

EXPERTS at Edinburgh University are celebrating the benefits of exercise for the elderly, saying it may stop the brain from shrinking and showing signs of dementia. The study, undertaken by experts at University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Epidemiology, and published in Neurology, looked at whether increased participation in leisure and physical activities may be cognitively protective. As part of the methodology, researchers looked at participants self-reported leisure and physical activity at 70 years of age and structural brain biomarkers at 73 years of age. “For white matter integrity, principal components analysis of 12 major tracts produced general factors for fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity,” the researchers said. “Atrophy, gray and normalappearing white matter (NAWM) volumes, and white matter lesion load were assessed using computational image processing methods; atrophy and WML were also assessed visually,” the researchers added. According to their findings, a higher level of physical activity was associated with higher fractional anisotropy, larger gray and normalappearing white matter volumes, less atrophy, and lower white matter lesion load. The physical activity associations with atrophy, gray matter, and white matter lesion remained significant after adjustment for covariates, including age, social class, and health status. Meanwhile, leisure activity was associated with NAWM volume, but was nonsignificant after including covariates. As such, researchers concluded that physical activity was associated with less atrophy and white matter lesion, and has the potential to be neuroprotective.

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