Graff-Radford, Michelle R

AbstractBackgroundThe American Academy of Neurology Practice Guidelines recommends physical exercise to help maintain cognition in people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (pwMCI). We previously demonstrated yoga’s benefit in maintenance of memory related activities of daily living at one year follow‐up in pwMCI (Chandler et al., 2019), and yoga may be beneficial in offsetting a sense of burden in care partners at 12 months (Amofa et al., submitted). In this analysis, we sought to examine the impact of yoga training on physical performance in pwMCI and their care partners.MethodIn this multisite, randomized clinical trial, we enrolled 272 patients meeting National Institute on Aging–Alzheimer’s Association criteria for MCI and a care partner. The intervention program was modeled on the 10 day Mayo Clinic HABIT Healthy Action to Benefit Independence and Thinking® program. Of 5 possible interventions (memory compensation training, computerized cognitive training, yoga, patient and partner support groups, and wellness education), 1 of 5 interventions was randomly selected to be withheld for each intervention group, thus allowing us to examine comparative effectiveness. Participants and their partners had 1‐day booster sessions at 6 and 12 months after intervention. The Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), a measure of balance, gait speed, and repeated chair stands was used to assess physical function outcomes.ResultThere was a general pattern of physical decline on the SPPB over the year in pwMCI, regardless of yoga training (d=‐0.04, p=0.78) (Figure 1, Panel A). Among care partners, those randomized to the no yoga group had a worse decline in physical function compared to those receiving yoga (d=‐0.31, p=0.034) (Figure 1, Panel B). While not reaching statistical significance in subgroup comparisons, yoga training tended to have a greater effect on SPPB than computerized cognitive training (d = 0.35, p = .06) or wellness education (d = 0.32, p =.09) (Table 1).ConclusionParticipation in yoga had a positive impact on physical performance outcomes at one year for care partners, but did not counteract general physical decline in pwMCI.

Abstract A number of efforts are underway to better understand the role of genetic variation in successful aging and longevity. However, to date, only two genes have been consistently associated with longevity in humans: APOE and FOXO3, with the APOE ɛ2 allele also protective against dementia. Recently, using an exome-wide SNP array approach, a missense variant CLEC3B c.316G>A (rs13963 p.S106G) was reported to associate with longevity in two independent cohorts of Japanese and Chinese participants. Interestingly, CLEC3B p.S106G is more frequent in Caucasian populations. Herein, we examined the frequency of CLEC3B p.S106G in a Caucasian series of 1,483 neurologically healthy individuals with a specific subset >80 years of age. Although our findings do not support an association between CLEC3B p.S106G and aging without neurological disease (p = .89), we confirmed the association between the APOE ε2 allele and better survival without neurological disease (p = .001). Further assessment of healthy aged cohorts that retain intact neurological function will be critical to understand the etiology of neurodegenerative disease and the role of age at risk.