Prevention & lipidsResearch article
Cardiorespiratory Fitness, Coronary Artery Calcium, and Risk of Later-Life Dementia
- Parametric illness-death models
Authors' conclusion
Lower CRF and higher CAC are independently associated with incident dementia. These findings support complementary, nonoverlapping roles of functional fitness and cumulative vascular injury in dementia pathogenesis, highlighting the importance of lifelong cardiovascular health.
Study context
- Population
- Participants in the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study (1998–2018) linked to Medicare claims (1999–2019), free of cardiovascular disease and dementia at baselinefree of cardiovascular disease and dementia at baseline (mean age 57.2 years, 30.2% women)
- Participants
- 10,933 participants
- Comparison
- high cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF); Coronary artery calcium (CAC) ≥100
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Incident all-cause dementia · median follow-up of 5.8 years
Hazard ratio (95% CI)
high CRF vs low CRF
0.69(0.53–0.90)
CAC ≥100 vs CAC <100
1.24(1.07–1.44)
- dementia cases
- 868
Further findings
Continuous analyses
- linear inverse association for CRF and a graded positive association for CAC
Interaction between CRF and CAC
- No interaction between CRF and CAC was observed
Original publication
Cardiorespiratory Fitness, Coronary Artery Calcium, and Risk of Later-Life Dementia. JACC Adv. Published 7 August 2026. doi:10.1016/j.jacadv.2026.103079
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it