Midlife Cardiovascular Fitness Is Reflected in the Brain's White Matter.

ABSTRACT: Disappointing results from clinical trials designed to delay structural brain decline and the accompanying increase in risk for dementia in older adults have precipitated a shift in testing promising interventions from late in life toward midlife before irreversible damage has accumulated. This shift, however, requires targeting midlife biomarkers that are associated with clinical changes manifesting only in late life. Here we explored possible links between one putative biomarker, distributed integrity of brain white matter, and two intervention targets, cardiovascular fitness and healthy lifestyle behaviors, in midlife. At age 45, fractional anisotropy (FA) derived from diffusion weighted MRI was used to estimate the microstructural integrity of distributed white matter tracts in a popul

SUBMITTER: d'Arbeloff T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8055854 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature