Fatores associados ao declínio cognitivo em idosas praticantes e não praticantes de atividade física

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that the total number of elderly people in the world is more than 900 million. In Brazil, according to data from the Brazilian National Household Survey (PNAD), the elderly population represented 12.6% of the population in 2012. The profile of diseases that affect populations as a result of the demographic and epidemiological transition highlights chronic noncommunicable diseases and impairment of cognitive function in the elderly. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the factors associated with cognitive decline in elderly women practitioners of physical activity (PPA) and non-practitioners of physical activity (NPPA). MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study with a sample of 71 elderly women (35 elderly women practitioners of physical activity and 36 non-practitioners of physical activity). The dependent variables were: screening of dementia, collected through the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and memory complaint, assessed by the Subjective Perception of Memory Complaints Questionnaire (MAC-Q). To test the correlation among MMSE scores, socioeconomic- demographic characteristics and the elderly health situation, it was used the Pearson correlation test and bivariate linear regression. To test the joint relationship of the independent variables on the cognition of the elderly, multiple linear regression was used, through the Stepwise Forward method. In the final model, the variables that presented p value <0.05 were considered significant. In order to quantify the effects of the independent variables: socioeconomic level (SEL), age, health self-assessment (HSA), number of Chronic Non- communicable Diseases (CNCD) and marital status exercised on dementia, regression models belonging to the classes of the Generalized Linear Models (GLM) were adjusted, with a significance level of 5% (p<0.05). A Student's t-test was used for difference between two means in an unpaired sample at a significance level of 5% (p<0.05). RESULTS: The mean age of the elderly PPA was 70.5 years (±5.1), and the elderly NPPA was 72.3 years (±7.8). In the identification of the factors associated with the subjective memory complaint in elderly practitioners of physical activity and non-practitioners of physical activity, it was verified that the HSA is positively correlated with the MAC-Q score in the PPA (p=0.041) and NPPA (p = 0.019). The elderly women who did not practice physical activity had lower SEL than those who practiced it. Regarding the identification of the factors associated with dementia in elderly women who did not practice physical activity, it was verified that the age variable presented a significant negative association with the MMSE score in both the PPA group (p=0.004) and the NPPA group (p=0.024). We also observed a significant association between the mean values of the variables MMSE (p=0.001) and SEL (p=0.0004) in both groups. CONCLUSIONS: Health self-assessment is a factor that presents a positive correlation with MAC-Q scores in elderly women practitioners and non-practitioners of physical activity, showing itself as a factor that can serve as an alert for the investigation of cognitive losses, contributing to the early detection of cognitive impairments, and with that, enable the prevention of future aggravations. Age is a factor that is associated with MMSE scores in elderly women who practice physical activities, as well as in those who do not, and it is observed that the higher the age, the lower the MMSE scores.