{"doi":"10.1093/gerona/glab169","title":"Vigorous Physical Activity and Cognitive Trajectory Later in Life: Prospective Association and Interaction by Apolipoprotein E e4 in the Nurses’ Health Study","abstract":"BACKGROUND: The apolipoprotein E (APOE) e4 allele is a well-established genetic risk factor of brain aging. Vigorous physical activity may be particularly important in APOE-e4 carriers, but data have been inconsistent, likely due to differences in the timing of the physical activity assessment, definition of cognitive decline, and/or sample size. METHODS: We prospectively evaluated the association between vigorous physical activity and cognition assessed at least 9 years later, according to APOE-e4 carrier status. Biennially from 1986, Nurses' Health Study participants reported their leisure-time physical activities. Starting in 1995-2001 and through 2008, participants (aged 70+ years) underwent up to 4 repeated cognitive telephone assessments (6 tasks averaged together using z-scores). RESULTS: Among 7252 women, latent process mixed models identified 3 major patterns of cognitive change over 6 years: high-stable, medium-stable, and decline. Taking the high-stable cognitive trajectory as the outcome reference in multinomial logistic regressions, highest tertile of vigorous physical activity (≥5.9 metabolic-equivalent [MET]-hours/wk) compared to lowest tertile (≤0.9 MET-hours/wk) was significantly associated with subsequent lower likelihood of the medium-stable trajectory in the global score (odds ratio [OR] [95% CI] = 0.72 [0.63, 0.82]), verbal memory (OR [95% CI] = 0.78 [0.68-0.89]), and telephone interview of cognitive status score (OR [95% CI] = 0.81 [0.70-0.94]). Vigorous physical activity was also associated with lower likelihood of decline in category fluency (OR [95% CI] = 0.72 [0.56, 0.92]). We observed some evidence (p-interaction = .07 for the global score) that the association was stronger among APOE-e4 carriers than noncarriers (OR [95% CI] = 0.60 [0.39, 0.92] vs 0.82 [0.59, 1.16]). CONCLUSION: Midlife vigorous physical activity was associated with better cognitive trajectories in women in their seventies, with suggestions of stronger associations among APOE-e4 carriers.","journal":"The Journals of Gerontology Series A","year":2021,"id":190967,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":13,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9672,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":6854,"name":"Jae H. Kang","orcid":"0000-0003-4812-0557","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":20423,"name":"I‐Min Lee","orcid":"0000-0002-1083-6907","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":340012,"name":"Francine Grodstein","orcid":"0000-0002-2699-7051","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":755811,"name":"Marie‐Noël Vercambre","orcid":"0000-0002-9735-4651","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":755810,"name":"Philippine Fassier","orcid":"0000-0001-8130-8485","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":63,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:49:31.121780Z","pmid":"34125204","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}