Examining the Effect of Aerobic Exercise on Sleep Quality in Community Dwelling Older Adults with Alzheimer's Disease
The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of aerobic exercise in sleep quality in community-dwelling older adults with AD. This study is a secondary data analysis of data from the FIT-AD Trial. Participants exercised three times a week for 30-60 minutes for six months. Thirty-six participants had complete actigraph data at baseline and month 6 and were included in this study: two parallel groups with a 2:1 ratio randomization (cycling: stretching); 29 in the cycling group and 7 in the stretching group. Data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance. The average age, education years, and MMSE scores of the sample are 77.9, 15.7, and 21.0; Twenty participants are men (55.5 %). There are no baseline differences(p> 0.05). The stretcher and cycling group had a mean of 7.4 (8.2) at baseline and 8.2 (8.3) at month 6 for total sleep duration(hours). The stretcher and cycling group had a mean of 5.1 (4.4) at baseline and 4.9 (4.4) at month 6 for the number of night awakenings. The sleep quality scores are not statistically significant by groups when covariates are adjusted (p>0.05). Our findings suggest that both cycling and stretching enhanced the quality of sleep and aerobic exercise didn’t show a superior effect on sleep quality, which may be caused by our small sample size. Future studies with larger sample sizes are needed to validate our findings.