(Press-News.org) Increasing your steps by even a little bit may help slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease among people at heightened risk, according to a new study. In a paper published in Nature Medicine, Mass General Brigham researchers found that physical activity was associated with slower rates of cognitive decline in older adults with elevated levels of amyloid-beta, a protein associated with Alzheimer’s.
Cognitive decline was delayed by three years on average for people who walked just 3,000-5,000 steps per day, and by seven years in people who walked 5,000-7,500 steps per day. Sedentary individuals had a significantly faster buildup of tau proteins in the brain and more rapid declines in cognition and daily functioning.
“This sheds light on why some people who appear to be on an Alzheimer’s disease trajectory don't decline as quickly as others,” said senior author Jasmeer Chhatwal, MD, PhD, of the Mass General Brigham Department of Neurology. “Lifestyle factors appear to impact the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease, suggesting that lifestyle changes may slow the emergence of cognitive symptoms if we act early.”
The researchers analyzed data from 296 participants aged 50-90 years old in the Harvard Aging Brain Study who were all cognitively unimpaired at the beginning of the study. They used PET brain scans to measure baseline levels of amyloid-beta in plaques and tau in tangles and assessed the participants’ physical activity using waistband pedometers. The participants received annual follow-up cognitive assessments for between two and 14 years (average = 9.3 years), and a subset received repeated PET scans to track changes in tau.
Higher step counts were linked to slower rates of cognitive decline and a slower buildup of tau proteins in participants with elevated baseline levels of amyloid-beta. The researchers’ statistical modeling suggested that most of the physical activity benefits associated with slowing cognitive decline were driven by slower tau buildup. By contrast, in people with low baseline levels of amyloid-beta, there was very little cognitive decline or accumulation of tau proteins over time and no significant associations with physical activity.
“We are thrilled that data from the Harvard Aging Brain Study has helped the field better understand the importance of physical activity for maintaining brain health,” said co-author Reisa Sperling, MD, a neurologist in the Mass General Brigham Department of Neurology and co-principal investigator of the Harvard Aging Brain Study. “These findings show us that it’s possible to build cognitive resilience and resistance to tau pathology in the setting of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. This is particularly encouraging for our quest to ultimately prevent Alzheimer’s disease dementia, as well as to decrease dementia due to multiple contributing factors.”
Looking ahead, the researchers plan to dive deeper into which aspects of physical activity may be most important, for example exercise intensity and longitudinal activity patterns. They also plan to investigate the biological mechanisms linking physical activity, tau buildup, and cognitive health. Critically, the authors believe that this work may help design future clinical trials that test exercise interventions to slow late-life cognitive decline, especially in individuals who are at heightened risk due to preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.
“We want to empower people to protect their brain and cognitive health by keeping physically active,” said first-author Wai-Ying Wendy Yau, MD, a cognitive neurologist in the Mass General Brigham Department of Neurology. "Every step counts — and even small increases in daily activities can build over time to create sustained changes in habit and health.”
Authorship: In addition to Yau, Chhatwal and Sperling, Mass General Brigham authors include, Dylan R. Kirn, Michael J. Properzi, Aaron P. Schultz, Zahra Shirzadi, Kailee Palmgren, Paola Matos, Courtney Maa, Stephanie A. Schultz, Rachel F. Buckley, Dorene M. Rentz, and Keith A. Johnson. Additional authors include Jennifer S. Rabin, Jeremy J. Pruzin.
Disclosures: The authors have no competing interests relevant to the current study. Potential conflicts of interest outside of the submitted work are included in Nature Medicine.
Funding: This study was funded by National Institutes of Health (K23 AG084868, K01 AG084816, P01 AG036694, K24 AG035007, R01 AG062667, R01 AG071865, P41EB015896, S10RR021110, S10RR023401, S10RR023043), the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Scientist Development Award, and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center.
Paper cited: Yau, W et al. “Physical Activity as a Modifiable Risk Factor in Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease” Nature Medicine DOI: 10.1038/s41591-025-03955-6
###
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.
END
Scientists are exploring leading-edge technologies that could transform how cancer is studied, detected and treated by catching it earlier, when it’s more treatable and survival rates are highest.
A new review by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute and other universities highlights how advances in New Approach Methodologies and tissue engineering are offering powerful new tools to study the earliest stages of cancer development. New Approach Methodologies use human-relevant technologies such as in vitro tests, organoids, organs-on-a-chip and computational modeling to replace, reduce or refine ...
About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that the U.S. youth nicotine vaping population recently became increasingly represented by daily use and unsuccessful quit attempts, a trend of which clinicians and policy makers should be aware.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Abbey R. Masonbrink, MD, MPH, email amasonbrink@chla.usc.edu.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.41061)
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...
About The Study: This study found that exposure to childhood adversity was associated with elevated all-cause mortality risk among adults with diabetes, hypertension, or mild-to-moderate emergency department visits.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Ping-I Lin, MD, PhD, email daniel.lin@health.slu.edu.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.4285)
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...
Since 2019, overall rates of nicotine vaping have declined among U.S. youth, but those who continue to vape are showing signs of worsening addiction, according to new USC research. Between 2020 and 2024, the share of current users who vaped every day increased from 15.4% to 28.8%. Over the same period, the share of daily users who tried to quit but were unable to rose from 28.2% to 53%. The study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, was just published in JAMA Network Open.
Public health advocates raised the alarm when youth vaping rates surged between 2014 and 2019. Data collected during the COVID-19 ...
A glacier on Antarctica’s Eastern Peninsula experienced the fastest retreat recorded in modern history—in just two months, nearly 50 percent of the glacier disintegrated.
A new CU Boulder-led study, published today in Nature Geoscience, details how and why Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier retreated at an unprecedented rate in 2023, losing a total of eight kilometers of ice in two months. The main driver was the glacier's underlying flat bedrock that enabled the glacier to go afloat after it substantially thinned, causing a rare calving process.
The new findings may help researchers identify other glaciers to monitor for rapid ...
The same cellular renewal that keeps our bodies healthy might also fuel the growth of cancer. A UC Merced biologist has found that the brain could hold the key to stopping it.
Professor Néstor Oviedo, a molecular and cell biologist and affiliate of the Health Sciences Research Institute, received more than $2 million from the National Institutes of Health to investigate signals mediating the earliest stages of cancer development. His findings could one day change how doctors think about treating cancer and age-related diseases.
“Our initial data suggest that key cancer symptoms can be selectively removed by activating signals from the nervous system,” ...
Computer-generated holography (CGH), as one of the most attractive next-generation three-dimensional (3D) display technology, possesses the capacity to provide authentic depth cues of 3D scenes via faithfully recording the optical field with computational simulations and loading the calculated holograms to reconstruct the target scenes. However, the process of hologram generation is predominately an ill-posed inverse problem, since only the intensity or amplitude information of the target scene is known while the original wavefront phase remains inaccessible ...
The last experimentally fundamental passive circuit element is the memristor that was originated in 2008 by Dmitri Strukov and presents a thin-film dielectric material with oxygen vacancies placed between two electrodes. This element changes its resistance based on the amount and direction of current that has flowed through it and its resistance has non-linear behavior from the current flow. Memristors are used in neuromorphic computing, data storage systems, and various devices for information processing and consume less power than basic silicon transistors. These elements are an attractive subject for modern scientific community due to their advantages ...
Missing Context in Single-Cell Data
Single-cell RNA sequencing has transformed biology by showing which genes are active in individual cells. However, this approach requires cells to be removed from their natural environment, erasing information about their position and neighbors. Spatial transcriptomics preserves this context but is technically more limited and harder to scale. Researchers have long lacked a way to study cell identity and tissue organization together.
AI Model Reveals Hidden Tissue Structures
Nicheformer overcomes this barrier by learning from both dissociated and spatial data. It can “transfer” spatial context back onto cells that were previously ...
From medical microrobots to flexible sensors, the next generation of technology depends on devices that are smaller, smarter, and more capable than ever before. But building these intricate structure, often just micrometers across, requires extraordinary precision, not only in shaping materials but in programming their properties.
In the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, a team of Chinese researchers reviews the fast-growing field of Field-assisted Additive Manufacturing (FAM)—a method that combines 3D printing with external fields such as magnetic, acoustic, or electric stimuli to precisely guide materials as they form.
"Traditional ...
