A Comparison of Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing and Field Walking Tests in Community-Dwelling Older Adults With Mild-to-Moderate Alzheimer’s Dementia

in Journal of Aging and Physical Activity

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Dereck L. Salisbury
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Fang Yu
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1123/japa.2019-0387
Keywords:
6-min walk test; aerobic fitness; cognitive impairment; graded exercise test; shuttle walk test
First Published Online:
04 Jun 2020
In Print:
Volume 28: Issue 6
Page Range:
911–919
Restricted access

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among peak exercise parameters on 6-min walk test, shuttle walk test, and laboratory-based cardiopulmonary exercise testing in persons with Alzheimer’s dementia. This study is a cross-sectional analysis of the baseline data of 90 participants (age 77.1 [6.6] years, 43% female) from the FIT-AD trial. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing produced significantly higher peak heart rate (118.6 [17.5] vs. 106 [22.8] vs. 106 [18.8] beats/min), rating of perceived exertion (16 [2.1] vs. 12 [2.3] vs. 11 [2.1]), and systolic blood pressure (182 [23.7] vs. 156 [18.9] vs. 150 [16.9] mmHg) compared with the shuttle walk test and 6-min walk test, respectively. Peak walking distance on shuttle walk test (241.3 [127.3] m) and 6-min walk test (365.0 [107.9] m) significantly correlated with peak oxygen consumption (17.1 [4.3] ml·kg−1·min−1) on cardiopulmonary exercise testing (r = .449, p ≤ .001 and r = .435, p ≤ .001), respectively, which is considerably lower than what is seen in older adults and persons with cardiopulmonary diseases.

The authors are with the School of Nursing, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.

Yu (yuxxx244@umn.edu) is corresponding author.
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