Microstructural
white matter (WM) degeneration has been shown to have a direct impact on mobility
performance. However, the association between speed gait and myelin changes is
less clear. This study examines the effect of myelin degeneration measured
using myelin water fraction (MWF), a specific proxy of myelin content, and
relaxation rates, sensitive but non-specific measures of myelin, on rapid gait
speed (RGS), which represents an integrated metric of physiologic function. Our
study is conducted on a large age-range cohort of cognitively unimpaired participants.
We show statistically significant correlations between MWF loss and RGS decline
in several WM structures.
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