The aim of this study was to determine how gait speed and frontal lobe functionsin community-dwelling older adults in Korea.
This was a cross-sectional study.
The study used data from the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Survey (KFACS), a multi-center longitudinal study addressing 10 centers across urban, rural, and suburban communities in Korea, between 2016 and 2017.
A total of 1552 older adults who underwent both gait speed tests and cognitive functions tests during the investigation of the KFACS.
Gait speed was assessed by asking participants to walk from a starting point to a point 4 meters away at a normal gait. Cognitive functions were evaluated using various standardized cognitive functions tests.
Gait speed was slower when participants were older or less educated The percentage of women, higher BMI, people with lower incomes, singles, smokers, and drinkers was high in the slower gait group. Also, all cognitive function scores were low and depression score was high in the group with slower walking speed. The slower walking speed showed low physical activity score and high prevalence of hypertension, osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. Among the seven cognitive functions (MMSE, memory, TMT, Recall, Recognition, digit span, and Fab), only TMT showed no significant difference between different gait speed groups. The other six cognitive functions showed higher results in the fastest gait speed group (T3), Participants in middle gait speed group (T2) also showed higher results in five of the seven cognitive function scores as well (Memory, Recall, Recognition, digit span, and Fab).
In this study, we found correlation between the slower gait speeds and the decrease in cognitive function, and especially the frontal lobe dysfunction was most prominent of all cognitive dysfunctions.