Cited by 402Dementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchPhysical Activity and HealthIntensive Care Unit Cognitive Disorders

Effect of a 24-Month Physical Activity Intervention vs Health Education on Cognitive Outcomes in Sedentary Older Adults: The LIFE Randomized Trial

Open access
Sink, Kaycee M., Espeland, Mark A., Castro, Cynthia M., Church, Timothy, Cohen, Ron, Dodson, John A., Guralnik, Jack, Hendrie, Hugh C. +10 more·2015·JAMA

Abstract

IMPORTANCE: Epidemiological evidence suggests that physical activity benefits cognition, but results from randomized trials are limited and mixed. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a 24-month physical activity program results in better cognitive function, lower risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia, or both, compared with a health education program. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A randomized clinical trial, the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders (LIFE) study, enrolled 1635 community-living participants at 8 US centers from February 2010 until December 2011. Participants were sedentary adults aged 70 to 89 years who were at risk for mobility disability but able to walk 400 m. INTERVENTIONS: A structured, moderate-intensity physical activity program (n = 818) that included walking, resistance training, and flexibility exercises or a health education program (n = 817) of educational workshops and upper-extremity stretching. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Prespecified secondary outcomes of the LIFE study included cognitive function measured by the Digit Symbol Coding (DSC) task subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (score range: 0-133; higher scores indicate better function) and the revised Hopkins Verbal Learning Test (HVLT-R; 12-item word list recall task) assessed in 1476 participants (90.3%). Tertiary outcomes included global and executive cognitive function and incident MCI or dementia at 24 months. RESULTS: At 24 months, DSC task and HVLT-R scores (adjusted for clinic site, sex, and baseline values) were not different between groups. The mean DSC task scores were 46.26 points for the physical activity group vs 46.28 for the health education group (mean difference, -0.01 points [95% CI, -0.80 to 0.77 points], P = .97). The mean HVLT-R delayed recall scores were 7.22 for the physical activity group vs 7.25 for the health education group (mean difference, -0.03 words [95% CI, -0.29 to 0.24 words], P = .84). No differences for any other cognitive or composite measures were observed. Participants in the physical activity group who were 80 years or older (n = 307) and those with poorer baseline physical performance (n = 328) had better changes in executive function composite scores compared with the health education group (P = .01 for interaction for both comparisons). Incident MCI or dementia occurred in 98 participants (13.2%) in the physical activity group and 91 participants (12.1%) in the health education group (odds ratio, 1.08 [95% CI, 0.80 to 1.46]). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Among sedentary older adults, a 24-month moderate-intensity physical activity program compared with a health education program did not result in improvements in global or domain-specific cognitive function. TRIAL REGISTRATION: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01072500.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1001/jama.2015.9617

Cites

40 of 40 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

4 of the 44 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [32]Yuan Y Multiple Imputation Using SAS Software J Statistical Software 2011 45 1 25 PMC3267837 22289957

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Sink, K. M., Espeland, M. A., Castro, C. M., Church, T., Cohen, R., Dodson, J. A., Guralnik, J., Hendrie, H. C., Jennings, J., Katula, J., Lopez, O. L., McDermott, M. M., Pahor, M., Reid, K. F., Rushing, J., Verghese, J., Rapp, S., & Williamson, J. D.
Affiliations
  • Wake Forest University Health Sciences (US)
  • Stanford Medicine (US)
  • Pennington Biomedical Research Center (US)
  • University of Florida (US)
  • New York University (US)
  • University of Maryland, Baltimore (US)
  • Indiana University Indianapolis (US)
  • Wake Forest University (US)
  • Department of Health and Exercise Sciences, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
  • Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • Northwestern University (US)
  • Tufts University (US)
  • Albert Einstein College of Medicine (US)
Corresponding author
Sink, Kaycee M.
Venue
JAMA
Published
2015-08-25
Volume
314
Issue
8
Pages
781
ISSN
  • 0002-9955 (ISSN-L)
  • 0098-7484
OpenAlex
W2110665915
Cited by
402
References
44
Citations by year
2026: 26 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 34 · 2022: 44 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 44 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 42 · 2017: 38 · 2016: 30 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 1
FWCI
31.15
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • JAMA (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • U.S. Department of Agriculture (58-1950-7-707)
  • National Institutes of Health (5p30ag031679-15)
  • National Institute on Aging (1-P30-AG21332, U01AG022376, 1 P30 AG031679, 3U01AG022376-05A2S, UO1 AG22376, P30-AG031679, P30AG024827, P30AG028740, P30AG021332, P30AG021342)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Physical Activity and Health
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Critical Care and Intensive Care Medicine › Intensive Care Unit Cognitive Disorders
Keywords
physical activity interventions, health education, cognitive function, older adults, sedentary lifestyle, mild cognitive impairment, dementia, walking, resistance training, flexibility training, executive function, verbal learning, life studies, community-dwelling older adults, cognitive aging, memory retrieval, attention and processing speed, walking speed
MeSH terms
Age Factors, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Dementia, Exercise Therapy, Female, Health Education, Health Promotion, Humans, Male, Walking, Treatment Outcome, Upper Extremity, Muscle Stretching Exercises, Resistance Training, Executive Function, Sedentary Behavior, Cognitive Dysfunction

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review