Effects of blueberry supplementation on measures of functional mobility in older adults.
Level 2 - randomized trial
Partially randomized controlled trial evaluating a dietary intervention against an active control.
PubMed 25909473 · doi:10.1139/apnm-2014-0247
What was done
Older adults (aged >60 years) were partially randomly assigned to consume either 2 cups of frozen blueberries daily or a carrot juice control drink for 6 weeks. Pre- and post-intervention assessments measured grip strength, simple reaction time, adaptive gait, and executive function. Within-group changes were analyzed with paired t-tests, and between-group differences were evaluated using mixed-model ANCOVA.
What was found
The abstract reports no exact numerical values, confidence intervals, or p-values. Relative to the control group, the blueberry group demonstrated significant improvements in the number of step errors during a challenging dual-task adaptive gait test, independent of gait speed. Within the blueberry group alone, significant improvements were also observed in usual gait speed, single-task adaptive gait step errors, and dual-task gait speed. Other measures (grip strength, simple reaction time, executive function) are not reported to have differed between groups.
Why it matters
These preliminary findings suggest that polyphenol-rich blueberry supplementation may help mitigate age-related declines in complex motor and gait performance in older adults.
Limits
The abstract does not state the sample size (n), dropouts, or quantitative effect sizes. The study used partial randomization rather than full randomization, creating risk of allocation bias, and the 6-week duration was short.
Cited by
- supports Blueberry polyphenols have been shown in scientific studies to improve motor coordination.