Local Seniors Help in National Study

For Stephen B. Kritchevsky, PhD, director of the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging, a six-year national study announced in March 2010 represents the culmination of 20 years of research in which Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center has been involved.

Beginning in 1991, studies funded by the National Institute on Aging looked at issues such as the benefits of weight-resistance exercise in managing knee pain, and weight loss and exercise and their relationship to cardiopulmonary disease.

“What has never been proven in the aging literature is that a physical activity or exercise can prevent the onset of disability,” Kritchevsky says.

That question is at the heart of the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders (LIFE) study.

Locally, 200 area senior citizens, some of whom are still being recruited, will help determine if a regimen of physical activity can prevent major mobility disability, which is defined as the inability to walk a quarter of a mile, or four city blocks.

The local volunteers are split into two groups. Half of the volunteers, who are all age 70 to 89, do twice-weekly supervised exercise routines involving balance training, light weight work and moderate to intense walking, along with home assignments to do more walking. They do that exercise in cooperation and under the supervision of Wake Forest University’s Department of Health and Exercise Sciences.

The other half of the volunteers in the randomized trial receive a program of health education seminars to help them learn about nutrition, safety, questions to ask their doctors. The goal was to provide those who didn’t get chosen for the exercise regimen with some good information about healthy living, Kritchevsky says.

The LIFE study, expected to cost $60 million by the time it concludes, includes teams from the University of Florida, Northwestern University, Pennington Biomedical Research Center (part of the Louisiana State University system), Stanford University, Tufts University, the University of Pittsburgh and Yale University.

Kritchevsky says it will likely be late 2012 or beyond before any results are known. And although it may seem obvious that physical activity can help improve mobility, he says the study is critical for other reasons.

The study will show definitively not only whether there is a link between exercise and avoiding mobility disability, but the strength of that link.

“If it’s a very minor thing, then maybe it’s not worth worrying about,” Kritchevsky says. “If it’s a very big effect, then it has important policy implications … for how to deploy resources to promote physical activity in older adults. The answer to the extent question is every bit as important as to the yes or no question.”

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