Resistance Training Increases White Matter Density in Frail Elderly Women

Abstract

We aimed to investigate the effects of maternal obesity on brain structure and metabolism in frail women, and their reversibility in response to exercise. We recruited 37 frail elderly women (20 offspring of lean/normal-weight mothers (OLM) and 17 offspring of obese/overweight mothers (OOM)) and nine non-frail controls to undergo magnetic resonance and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), positron emission tomography with Fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (PET), and cognitive function tests (CERAD). Frail women were studied before and after a 4-month resistance training, and controls were studied once. White matter (WM) density (voxel-based morphometry) was higher in OLM than in OOM subjects. Exercise increased WM density in both OLM and OOM in the cerebellum in superior parietal regions in OLM and in cuneal and precuneal regions in OOM. OLM gained more WM density than OOM in response to intervention. No significant results were found from the Freesurfer analysis, nor from PET or DTI images. Exercise has an impact on brain morphology and cognition in elderly frail women.

Kinetic Modeling of Brain [18-F]FDG Positron Emission Tomography Time Activity Curves with Input Function Recovery (IR) Method

“…At approximately 100 ± 10 min into the clamp, [ 18 F]FDG (187 ± 30 MBq, mean ± SD) was injected intravenously over 15 s and the brain radioactivity started either immediately after (n = 78, "early" studies), or approximately 1 h after [ 18 F]FDG injection (n = 92, "late" studies). The PET study protocols are described in more detail in previous reports [3][4][5][6][7][8]46,47]. The reason for which some studies performed the brain scans early or late is due to the design of usually multi-organ PET studies, which might a have different focus on which is the main organ of interest to study at the beginning of the PET acquisitions with better quantification options.…”

“…The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the data utilized were derived from published and unpublished studies approved by the Ethics Committee of Varsinais-Suomen sairaanhoitopiirin (VSSHP, Hospital district of southwest Finland) (for more details, please refer to the cited publications [3][4][5][6][7][8]46,47]).…”

“…There are several ways of analyzing [ 18 F]FDG data, and these vary depending on the research question. In metabolic research imaging, our group [3][4][5][6][7][8] and others [9][10][11][12][13] have typically used quantified measurements of the PET data to estimate the brain glucose metabolic rate via graphical approaches (such as the Gjedde-Patlak plot [14,15] and its approximate fractional uptake rate (FUR) [16][17][18]) or via compartmental kinetic modeling [2,19]. The quantification of the PET data requires the measurements of the tracer quantity in the plasma from the time of injection of the tracer until the end of the study, and thus, either arterial or arterialized (i.e., heated venous blood) samples are drawn throughout the study.…”