ABSTRACT
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic affected older adults worldwide. Sedentary older adults experienced more severe adverse health effects due to their shelter-in-place. Physical activity was strongly recommended during periods of social distancing. The present study evaluated the impact of a virtually supervised exercise program on the physical fitness and mental health of Mexican older adults during the pandemic's lockdown. Methods: Participants were 44 older adults who were assigned to one of four physical fitness groups: a healthy control group (Ctrl-H, n = 15), a comorbidity control group (Ctrl-COM, n = 9), an exercise group without comorbidities (Exe-H, n = 11), and an exercise group with comorbidities (Exe-COM, n = 9). The participants engaged in a 60-min, virtually-supervised concurrent exercise session three times/week for 12 weeks. Fitness was measured using the online Senior Fitness Tests and the 4-m Gait Speed Test. Mental health was evaluated through virtual interviews using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, the Geriatric Depression Scale, and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. Within-subject pre vs. post-intervention comparisons tested for significant differences, between-groups and over time. Results: Significant interactions were found in the scores of the Geriatric Depression Scale (p ≤ 0.0001; ηp2 = 0.35), the Hamilton Depression Scale (p ≤ 0.0001; ηp2 = 0.35), resilience scores (p ≤ 0.0001; ηp2 = 0.46), lower-body strength (p ≤ 0.0001; ηp2 = 0.32), timed up-and-go test (p = 0.018; ηp2 = 0.18), the 6MWT distance scores (p ≤ 0.0001; ηp2 = 0.39), and the 4-m gait speed test scores (p = 0.011; ηp2 = 0.20). Conclusion: A long-term virtually-supervised exercise program conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown period led to marked improvements in both the fitness and mental health of older Mexican adults. Comorbidities did not diminish these benefits. These findings provide empirical support for online exercise programs in the daily routines of older adults to make clinically meaningful improvements in both physical and mental well-being.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Comorbidity , Mental Health , Physical Fitness , Humans , COVID-19/psychology , Aged , Male , Female , Mexico , Exercise/psychology , Exercise Therapy/methods , Aged, 80 and over , SARS-CoV-2 , Pandemics , Middle AgedABSTRACT
El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo general identificar la asociación entre las alteraciones olfativas y el reconocimiento emocional en un grupo de pacientes con diagnóstico de traumatismo craneoencefálico. Fue desarrollada bajo un enfoque cuantitativo con diseño no experimental, en donde fueron evaluados 10 pacientes con antecedente de trauma craneoencefálico moderado y severo junto a 10 participantes controles sin daño cerebral. Para las variables sexo, edad y escolaridad los resultados fueron muy similares entre los grupos, con edades promedio de 26 años; la población fue predominantemente masculina, y la mayoría tenía grado de educación superior. En las pruebas de reconocimiento emocional, el grupo control logró un desempeño superior al grupo de casos. Adicionalmente, el grupo control logró mejor capacidad en las pruebas olfativas que el grupo de casos. Se encontró una correlación estadísticamente significativa entre los resultados del reconocimiento emocional y la variable olfativa en el grupo de casos, lo que permite identificar el rol que estructuras del sistema cerebral topográfica y funcionalmente pueden estar participando del procesamiento; a su vez, abre perspectivas de estudios a futuro, en especial a modelos de intervención en los grupos clínicos con afectación por el traumatismo craneoencefálico.
The general objective of this study was to "identify the association between emotional recognition and olfactory alterations in a group of patients with SCD". It was developed under a quantitative approach with nonexperimental design, in which 10 patients with a history of moderate and severe cranioencephalic trauma were evaluated along with 10 control participants without brain damage. For the variables sex, age and schooling the results were very similar among the groups, with average ages of 26 years, the population was predominantly male and most had higher education. In the tests of emotional recognition the control group achieved a superior performance to the group of cases. In addition, the control group achieved better capacity in olfactory tests than the group of cases. A statistically significant correlation was found between the emotional recognition results and the olfactory variable in the group of cases, which allows the identification of the role that topographic and functional brain system structures may be involved in processing; In turn, it opens prospects for future studies especially to intervention models in clinical groups affected by head trauma.
