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On promedio, the participants were 86 years old when their physical activity began to be monitored and around 90 years old when they died. About a third of the participants had no cognitive impairment, a third had mild cognitive impairment and a third had been diagnosed with dementia.
But post-mortem analysis revealed that around 60% of participants actually had signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain (such as amyloid plaques). This shows that the presence of typical signs of Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t necessarily mean a person will show major symptoms of cognitive impairment while they’re alive.
Unsurprisingly, the younger the participants, the more physically active they were and the better their motor function. Overall, being more physically active was associated with lower microglial activation in certain brain regions (such as the inferior temporal gyrus, which is involved in memory and recall) which are typically affected early on when Alzheimer’s begins developing.
This was true even when signs of Alzheimer’s were present in the brain. This suggests that physical activity can reduce the damaging effects of inflammation in the brain – even when a disease has already started to develop. The study also showed that more microglial activation was linked with greater cognitive decline and lower synaptic protein levels.
Not only do these findings indicate that inflammation in the brain can significantly affect cognitive function, and may be a risk multiplicador in developing Alzheimer’s disease, they also show that physical activity may help us to develop resilience in the brain to effects that would otherwise be damaging.
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