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Updated: Mar 19, 2026
Methodology for Establishing a Community-Wide Life Laboratory for Capturing Unobtrusive and Continuous Remote Activity and Health Data
Published on: July 27, 2018
Association between Cognitive Status and Physical Activity: Study Profile on Baseline Survey of the My Mind Project
Cristina Gagliardi1, Roberta Papa2, Demetrio Postacchini3
1Centre of Socio-economic Gerontological Research, Italian National Research Centre on Ageing (INRCA), Ancona 60124, Italy. c.gagliardi@inrca.it.
Background:
The incidence of people with dementia is expected to increase significantly in the coming years, but it seems that there is a relationship between an active lifestyle and cognitive decline. The present study aimed to compare the characteristics and engagement in the physical activity (PA) of three groups of Italian elderly with different cognitive statuses at baseline phase.
Methods:
Data were examined using the results from the "My Mind Project" on 305 community-dwelling Italians. The sample was comprised of 93 subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD), 109 with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 103 healthy elderly (HE).
Results:
Classification of subjects on the basis of Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE) score showed that 47% of HE performed the highest level of physical activity while 40% of AD performed the lowest level. MCI subjects were distributed quite homogeneously across the levels (p < 0.001). Physical activity such as walking and light sports was carried out mainly and more frequently by HE as compared to the others (p < 0.05). As regards functional status, AD presented worse conditions in basic and instrumental activities of daily living than the other groups (p < 0.001).
Conclusions:
Our results evidenced that subjects with cognitive decline had the tendency to engage in PA less than HE. In particular, age and education negatively affected engagement in PA.
