The Association Between Subjective Age and Motoric Cognitive Risk Syndrome: Results From a Population-Based Cohort Study

Motoric cognitive risk syndrome and risk of mortality in older adults

Yannick Stephan, Angelina R Sutin, Brice Canadaph, Antonio Terracciano and Angela Gutchess

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2021, vol. 76, issue 10, 2023-2028

Abstract: ObjectivesThe motoric cognitive risk (MCR) syndrome, characterized by cognitive complaints and slower gait speed, is a predementia syndrome associated with dementia and mortality risk. The present study examined whether subjective age, that is, how old or young individuals feel relative to their chronological age, is related to concurrent and incident MCR syndrome. A relation between subjective age and MCR will inform knowledge on psychological factors related to dementia risk, identify who is at greater risk, and suggest a potential target of intervention.MethodsThe study sample was composed of 6,341 individuals aged 65–107 years without dementia from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal study of adults aged 50 years and older. Participants completed measures of subjective age, cognitive complaints, and gait speed and provided information on demographic factors, cognition, physical activity, depressive symptoms, and body mass index (BMI) at baseline in 2008/2010. Incident MCR was assessed 4 and 8 years later.ResultsControlling for demographic factors, an older subjective age was related to more than 60% higher likelihood of MCR at baseline and to around 50% higher risk of incident MCR over time. These associations remained significant when cognition, physical inactivity, depressive symptoms, and BMI were included in the analytic models.DiscussionThis study provides evidence that how old individuals feel is related to concurrent and incident MCR beyond the effect of chronological age, other demographic factors, physical inactivity, depressive symptoms, BMI, and cognitive functioning.

Keywords: Cognitive complaint; Motoric cognitive risk; Subjective age; Walking speed (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbab047 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:76:y:2021:i:10:p:2023-2028.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().