Baduanjin exercise modulates the hippocampal subregion structure in community-dwelling older adults with cognitive frailty

Development and validation of a nomogram for predicting cognitive frailty in patients on maintenance haemodialysis

AIMS

This study aimed to construct a nomogram for predicting the risk of cognitive frailty in patients on maintenance haemodialysis.

DESIGN

An explorative cross-sectional design was adopted.

METHODS

From April 2022 to July 2022, 496 participants were recruited from five haemodialysis centres in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. Participants with cognitive frailty were screened by Frailty Phenotype scale and Mini-Mental State Examination. Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regression and multivariate logistic regression were utilized to determine predictors. The predictive performance of the nomogram was validated by calibration and discrimination. Decision curve analysis was used to assess clinical utility. Internal validation was implemented using 1000 bootstrap samples to mitigate overfitting.

RESULTS

The prevalence of cognitive frailty was 17.5% (n = 87). Six risk predictors, namely health empowerment, alexithymia, age, educational level, marital status and dialysis vintage, were screened and used to develop a nomogram model. The nomogram had satisfactory discrimination and calibration, and decision curve analysis revealed considerable clinical utility.

CONCLUSIONS

A nomogram incorporated with the six risk predictors was developed, and it exhibited excellent prediction performance. The nomogram may strengthen the effective screening of patients at high risk of cognitive frailty.

IMPACT

This study established a tool for healthcare staff to predict cognitive frailty probability and identify risk factors in patients on maintenance haemodialysis. The nomogram can meet the needs of personalized care and precision medicine simultaneously.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

Data were collected from patients on maintenance haemodialysis by using questionnaire survey.

REPORTING METHOD

STROBE checklist was used.

Risk factors of cognitive frailty in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients and its implication for death: a cohort study

BACKGROUNDS

Cognitive frailty, a clinical syndrome with physical frailty and cognitive impairment, leads to mortality and other adverse health outcomes in older adults. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of cognitive frailty, and its influencing factors, and follow its impact on short-term mortality in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients, to provide a theoretical scientific reference basis for clinical intervention and management of cognitive frailty.

METHODS

A sample of 243 elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients in the respiratory department of a tertiary care hospital was conveniently sampled from November 2021 to February 2023, and the prevalence of cognitive frailty was investigated using the General Information Survey Scale, the Fried Phenotype Scale, the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Anxiety Self-Rating Scale, the Brief Geriatric Depression Scale, and the Mortality Record. The mortality was recorded by telephone follow-up after 6 months. A database was created and statistical analysis such as one-way analysis of variance, logistic regression analysis, Kaplan-Meier, and Cox survival analysis were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

A total of 47 patients (19.3%) had cognitive frailty; there were statistical differences in the prevalence of cognitive frailty by medical payment type, physical exercise, and sleeping time (P < 0.05). During a 6-month follow-up, 38 patients (15.6%) died. Cox survival analysis showed that the risk of death in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients in the cognitive frailty group was 3.212 times higher than that in the normal cognitive function and non-frailty group (95% CI 1.646-6.270, P = 0.001), and 5.266 times higher than that in the normal cognitive function and frailty group (95% CI 3.159-8.778, P < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

The prevalence of cognitive frailty in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients is high, and clinical staff should pay attention to patients' medical burden and financial ability, and reduce the incidence of cognitive frailty by instructing patients to perform physical exercise and arrange sleep time. Cognitive frailty is an important risk factor for mortality within 6 months in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients, and early intervention should be emphasised to reduce or delay cognitive frailty and mortality.

The modulation effects of the mind-body and physical exercises on the basolateral amygdala-temporal pole pathway on individuals with knee osteoarthritis

Background/Objective

To investigate the modulatory effects of different physical exercise modalities on connectivity of amygdala subregions and its association with pain symptoms in patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA).

Methods

140 patients with KOA were randomly allocated either to the Tai Chi, Baduanjin, Stationary cycling, or health education group and conducted a 12 week-long intervention in one of the four groups. The behavioral, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and blood data were collected at baseline and the end of the study.

Results

Compared to the control group, all physical exercise modalities lead to significant increases in Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) pain score (pain relief) and serum Programmed Death-1 (PD-1) levels. Additionally, all physical exercise modalities resulted in decreased resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the basolateral amygdala (BA)-temporal pole and BA-medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The overlapping BA-temporal pole rsFC observed in both Tai Chi and Baduanjin groups was significantly associated with pain relief, while the BA-mPFC rsFC was significantly associated with PD-1 levels. In addition, we found increased fractional anisotropy (FA) values, a measurement of water diffusion anisotropy of tissue that responded to changes in brain microstructure, within the mind-body exercise groups' BA-temporal pole pathway. The average FA value of this pathway was positively correlated with KOOS pain score at baseline across all subjects.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that physical exercise has the potential to modulate both functional and anatomical connectivity of the amygdala subregions, indicating a possible shared pathway for various physical exercise modalities.

The neurobiological effects of mind-body exercise: a systematic review and meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies

The neurobiological effects of mind-body exercise on brain activation, functional neural connections and structural changes in the brain remain elusive. This systematic review and coordinate-based meta-analysis investigated the changes in resting-state and task-based brain activation, as well as structural brain changes before and after mind-body exercise compared to waitlist or active controls based on published structural or functional magnetic resonance imaging randomized controlled trials or cross-sectional studies. Electronic database search and manual search in relevant publications yielded 34 empirical studies with low-to-moderate risk of bias (assessed by Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials or Joanna Briggs Institute's critical appraisal checklist for analytical cross-sectional studies) that fulfilled the inclusion criteria, with 26 studies included in the narrative synthesis and 8 studies included in the meta-analysis. Coordinate-based meta-analysis showed that, while mind-body exercise enhanced the activation of the left anterior cingulate cortex within the default mode network (DMN), it induced more deactivation in the left supramarginal gyrus within the ventral attention network (uncorrected ps < 0.05). Meta-regression with duration of mind-body practice as a factor showed that, the activation of right inferior parietal gyrus within the DMN showed a positive association with increasing years of practice (voxel-corrected p < 0.005). Although mind-body exercise is shown to selectively modulate brain functional networks supporting attentional control and self-awareness, the overall certainty of evidence is limited by small number of studies. Further investigations are needed to understand the effects of both short-term and long-term mind-body exercise on structural changes in the brain.PROSPERO registration number: CRD42021248984.

Hippocampal Subfield Volumes in Amateur Marathon Runners

PURPOSE

Numerous studies have implicated the involvement of structure and function of the hippocampus in physical exercise, and the larger hippocampal volume is one of the relevant benefits reported in exercise. It remains to be determined how the different subfields of hippocampus respond to physical exercise.

METHODS

A 3D T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging was acquired in 73 amateur marathon runners (AMR) and 52 healthy controls (HC) matched with age, sex, and education. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and the Fatigue Severity Scale were assessed in all participants. We obtained hippocampal subfield volumes using FreeSurfer 6.0. We compared the volumes of the hippocampal subfield between the two groups and ascertained correlation between the significant subfield metrics and the significant behavioral measure in AMR group.

RESULTS

The AMR had significantly better sleep than HC, manifested as with lower score of PSQI. Sleep duration in AMR and HC was not significantly different from each other. In the AMR group, the left and right hippocampus, cornu ammonis 1 (CA1), CA4, granule cell and molecular layers of the dentate gyrus, molecular layer, left CA2-3, and left hippocampal-amygdaloid transition area volumes were significantly larger compared with those in the HC group. In AMR group, the correlations between the PSQI and the hippocampal subfield volumes were not significant. No correlations were found between hippocampal subfield volumes and sleep duration in AMR group.

CONCLUSIONS

We reported larger volumes of specific hippocampal subfields in AMR, which may provide a hippocampal volumetric reserve that protects against age-related hippocampal deterioration. These findings should be further investigated in longitudinal studies.