Cognitive Effects of Aerobic Exercise in Alzheimer's Disease: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Aerobic exercise has shown inconsistent cognitive effects in older adults with Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia. Objective: To examine the immediate and longitudinal effects of 6-month cycling on cognition in older adults with AD dementia. Methods: This randomized controlled trial randomized 96 participants (64 to cycling and 32 to stretching for six months) and followed them for another six months. The intervention was supervised, moderate-intensity cycling for 20-50 minutes, 3 times a week for six months. The control was light-intensity stretching. Cognition was assessed at baseline, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months using the AD Assessment Scale-Cognition (ADAS-Cog). Discrete cognitive domains were measured using the AD Uniform Data Set battery. Results: The participants were 77.4 +/- 6.8 years old with 15.6 +/- 2.9 years of education, and 55% were male. The 6-month change in ADAS-Cog was 1.0 +/- 4.6 (cycling) and 0.1 +/- 4.1 (stretching), which were both significantly less than the natural 3.2 +/- 6.3-point increase observed naturally with disease progression. The 12-month change was 2.4 +/- 5.2 (cycling) and 2.2 +/- 5.7 (control). ADAS-Cog did not differ between groups at 6 (p = 0.386) and 12 months (p = 0.856). There were no differences in the 12-month rate of change in ADAS-Cog (0.192 versus 0.197, p = 0.967), memory (-0.012 versus -0.019, p = 0.373), executive function (-0.020 versus -0.012, p = 0.383), attention (-0.035 versus -0.033, p = 0.908), or language (-0.028 versus -0.026, p = 0.756). Conclusion: Exercise may reduce decline in global cognition in older adults with mild-to-moderate AD dementia. Aerobic exercise did not show superior cognitive effects to stretching in our pilot trial, possibly due to the lack of power.

Automated summary

The study found that for older adults with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease, exercise may help reduce the decline in global cognition. However, aerobic exercise did not show superior cognitive effects compared to stretching, possibly due to the lack of power in the pilot trial.