What are the Benefits of Exercise for Alzheimer’s Disease? A Systematic Review of the Past 10 Years
in Journal of Aging and Physical ActivityClick name to view affiliation
To identify and characterize the scientific literature on the effects of exercise on Alzheimer’s disease, research was conducted in the following databases: MEDLINE, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Scopus. These MeSH terms—“exercise”, “motor activity”, “physical fitness”, “Alzheimer disease”, and its synonyms in English—were used in the initial search to locate studies published between 2003 and 2013. After reading the 12 final articles in their entirety, two additional articles, found by a manual search, were included. Of these, 13 had beneficial results of exercise in Alzheimer’s disease. Given the results discussed here, the exercise may be important for the improvement of functionality and performance of daily life activities, neuropsychiatric disturbances, cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory fitness, functional capacity components (flexibility, agility, balance, strength), and improvements in some cognitive components such as sustained attention, visual memory, and frontal cognitive function in patients with AD.
Hernández, Sandreschi, F.C. da Silva, Arancibia, R. da Silva, and Andrade are with the Center of Health Sciences and Sport, UDESC, Univ. of State of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil. Gutierres is with the Physical Education College, University of Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil.
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