Abstract Details

Title Cardiorespiratory Fitness Is Protective Against Alzheimer's and Related Disorders

Topic Aging and Dementia

Presentation(s) S15 - Aging and Dementia 1 (4:54 PM-5:06 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 008

Background Currently there are no known effective treatments to prevent or stop the progression of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias. CRF is associated with favorable health outcomes. Thus, we examined the relationship between CRF measured using an exercise treadmill test (ETT) with incident AD/ADRD.

Objective To evaluate the association between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and the risk of developing Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders (ADRD).

Design/Methods Using the Veterans Health administration’s national electronic health record we identified 649,605 Veterans 30-95 years of age who completed standardized ETT between 2000-2017 and were free of ADRD at the time of the ETT. Natural language processing was used to extract metabolic equivalents (METs). We formed five age-specific fitness categories, lowest-fit (n=132,63; METs=3.8 ±), low-fit (n=129,493; METs=5.8 ±), moderate-fit (n=120,988; METs=7.5±,), fit (n=137,122; METs 9.2±) and highest-fit (n=129,368, METs=11.7±), based on peak METs achieved during the first ETT.
ADRD was identified using International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for incident ADRD during 8.8 years of average follow-up were estimated using lowest-fit group as the referent, adjusting for baseline characteristics.

Results The mean age of the participants was 61 years (standard deviation, 11). Of those, 5.7% were women and 16.6% African Americans. Unadjusted incident rates for ADRD were 9.5, 8.5, 7.4, 7.2 and 6.4 per 1,000 person-years for the lowest-fit to the highest-fit group, respectively (p<0.001). When compared to the lowest-fit group, multivariable adjusted HRs (95% CIs) for incident ADRD associated with low-, moderate-, high- and highest-fit groups were 0.87 (0.85-0.90; p<0.001), 0.80 (0.78-0.83; p<0.001), 0.74 (0.72-0.76; p<0.001) and 0.67 (0.65-0.70; p<0.001), respectively.

Conclusions Our findings suggest that the association between CRF and ADRD risk is inverse, independent, and graded.

Authors/Disclosures
Edward Y. Zamrini, MD (Irvine Clinical Research) PRESENTER	Dr. Zamrini has received personal compensation for serving as an employee of George Washington University. Dr. Zamrini has received personal compensation for serving as an employee of Irvine Clinical Research. Dr. Zamrini has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for NIH. Dr. Zamrini has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as a Consultant for Eli Lilly. The institution of Dr. Zamrini has received research support from NIH. The institution of Dr. Zamrini has received research support from NIH.
Yan Cheng	No disclosure on file
Peter Kokkinos (VA Medical Center)	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
Helen Sheriff (DC VAMC)	No disclosure on file
Yijun Shao (George Washington University)	No disclosure on file
Ali Ahmed (DCVAMC)	No disclosure on file
Qing Zeng-Treitler (George Washington University)	No disclosure on file