Research Paper|Volume 10, Issue 1|pp 144—153

Predictors of gait speed and its change over three years in community-dwelling older people

Daniela Pinter¹, Stuart J. Ritchie^2,³, Thomas Gattringer¹, Mark E. Bastin^2,^4,⁵, Maria del C. Valdés Hernández^4,⁵, Janie Corley^2,³, Susana Muñoz Maniega^4,⁵, Alison Pattie^2,³, David A. Dickie^4,⁵, Alan J. Gow^2,⁶, John M. Starr^2,⁷, Ian J. Deary^2,³, Christian Enzinger^1,⁸, Franz Fazekas¹, Joanna Wardlaw^2,^4,^5,⁹

¹Department of Neurology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, 8036, Austria
²Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, UK
³Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, UK
⁴Brain Research Imaging Centre, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH4 2XU, UK
⁵Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH4 2XU, UK
⁶Department of Psychology, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, UK
⁷Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, UK
⁸Division of Neuroradiology, Vascular and Interventional Neuroradiology, Department of Radiology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, 8036, Austria
⁹UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, UK

Received: November 17, 2017Accepted: January 16, 2017Published: January 20, 2018

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101365

Copyright: © 2018 Pinter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

We aimed to assess whether and how changes in brain volume and increases in white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume over three years predict gait speed and its change independently of demographics, vascular risk factors and physical status. We analyzed 443 individuals from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, at mean age 73 and 76 years. Gait speed at age 76 was predicted by age, grip strength and body mass index at mean age 73, three-year brain volume decrease and WMH volume increase, explaining 26.1% of variance. Decline in gait speed to age 76 was predicted by the same five variables explaining 40.9% of variance. In both analyses, grip strength and body mass index explained the most variance. A clinically significant decline in gait speed (≥ 0.1 m/s per year) occurred in 24.4%. These individuals had more structural brain changes. Brain volume and WMH changes were independent predictors of gait dysfunction and its three-year change, but the impact of malleable physical factors such as grip strength or body mass index was greater.