Abstract
Purpose
Maintenance of cognitive abilities is important for elderly to stay independent. With the aging of the population, the call for modifiable factors is emerging. Dietary protein might improve cognitive performance; however, this has hardly been studied. Therefore, we studied the impact of 24-week dietary protein supplementation on cognitive performance in pre-frail and frail elderly people.
Methods
Pre-frail and frail elderly subjects, according to the Fried criteria, randomly received a protein drink containing 15 g protein or a placebo drink twice a day. Cognitive performance was measured at baseline and after 24 weeks by means of a sensitive neuropsychological test battery. In addition, reaction time was assessed after both 12 and 24 weeks of intervention. Domain scores were calculated for the domains episodic memory, attention and working memory, information processing speed, and executive functioning. Analyses of covariance were used to determine differences between groups. Linear mixed models were used to determine differences in reaction time over time and per treatment.
Results
In total, 65 subjects (79 ± 8 years) with a median Mini-Mental State Examination score of 28 (interquartile range 26–30) were included. Reaction time improved more in the protein group (68 ms) than in the placebo group (18 ms, P = 0.03). Dietary protein had no significant effect on any of the cognitive domain scores.
Conclusions
Protein supplementation might improve reaction time performance in pre-frail and frail elderly, but did not improve other cognitive functions.
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge all participants in the ProMuscle study. Furthermore, we want to thank all colleagues, with special thanks to Marlou Dirks, and students who worked in this study for their help and input. The authors’ contributions were as follows: study design: OvdR, MT, GJH, LJCvL, and LCPGMdG; data collection: NLvdZ, MT; data analyses and writing article: NLvdZ, OvdR; and expertise of reaction time test: JA. GJH is an employee at the Dutch Dairy Association (NZO), but he had no interference with data collection and data analysis. All authors provided critical revision of the manuscript. This project was financed by Top Institute Food and Nutrition and Dutch Dairy Organization (NZO). None of the authors had any personal or financial conflict of interest.
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The authors declared no conflict of interest.
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This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01109628.
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van der Zwaluw, N.L., van de Rest, O., Tieland, M. et al. The impact of protein supplementation on cognitive performance in frail elderly. Eur J Nutr 53, 803–812 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-013-0584-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-013-0584-9