Research Paper Volume 16, Issue 18 pp 12473—12497
Determinants of cerebral blood flow and arterial transit time in healthy older adults
- 1 School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
- 2 Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
- 3 School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
- 4 College of Psychology, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK
- 5 Department of Sport Science and Physical Education, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway
- 6 Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
- 7 Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Received: February 20, 2024 Accepted: August 2, 2024 Published: September 18, 2024
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.206112How to Cite
Copyright: © 2024 Feron et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Cerebral blood flow (CBF) and arterial transit time (ATT), markers of brain vascular health, worsen with age. The primary aim of this cross-sectional study was to identify modifiable determinants of CBF and ATT in healthy older adults (n = 78, aged 60–81 years). Associations between cardiorespiratory fitness and CBF or ATT were of particular interest because the impact of cardiorespiratory fitness is not clear within existing literature. Secondly, this study assessed whether CBF or ATT relate to cognitive function in older adults. Multiple post-labelling delay pseudo-continuous arterial spin labelling estimated resting CBF and ATT in grey matter. Results from multiple linear regressions found higher BMI was associated with lower global CBF (β = −0.35, P = 0.008) and a longer global ATT (β = 0.30, P = 0.017), global ATT lengthened with increasing age (β = 0.43, P = 0.004), and higher cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with longer ATT in parietal (β = 0.44, P = 0.004) and occipital (β = 0.45, P = 0.003) regions. Global or regional CBF or ATT were not associated with processing speed, working memory, or attention. In conclusion, preventing excessive weight gain may help attenuate age-related declines in brain vascular health. ATT may be more sensitive to age-related decline than CBF, and therefore useful for early detection and management of cerebrovascular impairment. Finally, cardiorespiratory fitness appears to have little effect on CBF but may induce longer ATT in specific regions.
Abbreviations
ASL: arterial spin labelling; ATT: arterial transit time; BMI: body mass index; CBF: cerebral blood flow; PLD: post-labelling delay; sCoV: spatial coefficient of variation in ASL signal; V̇O2peak: peak oxygen consumption.