The Influence of Age-related Changes in Tactile Sensibility and Muscular Strength on Hand Function in Older Adult Females

Abstract

s u m m a r yBackground: Aging affects the human hand function. For example, a decline in manual dexterity often accompanies old age. This decline corresponds to age-related changes in muscle and/or tactile functions. This study investigated whether age-related changes in muscular strength and tactile sensibility are related to the hand function. Methods: The subjects consisted of 64 older adult females. The hand function was assessed using Perdue pegboard test. The handgrip strength was measured using a handgrip dynamometer. Tactile-pressure threshold was evaluated using Semmes-Weinstein monofilaments. These tests were performed on the dominant hand. All data items were compared among the four age groups (65e69 years, n ¼ 17; 70e74 years, n ¼ 16; 75e79 years, n ¼ 15; 80e85 years, n ¼ 16). Results: The scores on Perdue pegboard test showed significant differences among the four age groups, and they decreased with age. The tactile-pressure threshold was augmented with increasing age, whereas handgrip strength did not differ among the four age groups. A significant relationship was observed between the Perdue pegboard test score and tactile-pressure threshold (r ¼ À0.61), but not the handgrip strength (r ¼ 0.18). Conclusion: These results suggested that the manual dexterity in the hand function was attenuated with increasing age. We considered that this attenuating effect was associated with a decline in tactile sensibility rather than a change in the muscular strength of the hand.

Age-related changes in cutaneous sensation in the healthy human hand

“…Reduced cutaneous sensation has also been correlated with poor hand function (Dellon et al 1997;Melchior et al 2007), but the relationship between higher cutaneous thresholds at the fingertips and impaired motor performances are inconsistent (Cole et al 1998;Ranganathan et al 2001;Aoki and Fukuoka 2010;Murata et al 2010). It has also been suggested that work-related expertise in fine dexterous manipulation does not attenuate age-related changes in cutaneous sensation at the fingertip (Reuter et al 2012).…”

“…Age-related changes in sensation are usually investigated at a single site, typically the index fingertip (e.g., Thornbury and Mistretta 1981;Desrosiers et al 1996;Tremblay et al 2005;Murata et al 2010), although the tip of the little finger (Bruce 1980), two to three fingertips (Cole et al 1998;BearLehman et al 2003), or all five fingertips (Kalisch et al 2008;Aoki and Fukuoka 2010), have been compared. Changes in cutaneous sensation are more frequently reported using two-point discrimination, again most often at the fingertips (e.g., Bovenzi and Zadini 1989;Woodward 1993;Desrosiers et al 1996;Stevens and Choo 1996;Kalisch et al 2008;van Nes et al 2008) although the palm and dorsal surface have been studied (Axelrod and Cohen 1961;Gellis and Pool 1977;Stevens and Choo 1996).…”

Temporal Aspects of Memory: A Comparison of Memory Performance, Processing Speed and Time Estimation Between Young and Older Adults

“…This was in line with hypotheses and past research (Hoyer et al, 2004 ; Gilmore et al, 2006 ) especially with regard to the SS and Cod which are WAIS clinical measures of processing speed, that are also heavily reliant on motor speed (Ebaid et al, 2017b ). In line with this, manual motor speed has been consistently reported to slow with increased age (Murata et al, 2010 ; Ebaid et al, 2017b ). Elevated depression and anxiety symptoms are also often reported to impede cognitive performance in older populations (Beaudreau and O’Hara, 2008 , 2009 ), however, it is interesting to note that our healthy older sample reported lower depression anxiety and stress scores than our younger adults, making negative affective issues unlikely to have impeded task performance in this case.…”

A Cross-Sectional Evaluation on Physical Fitness of Malaysian Firefighters

“…At the age of 20 to 35 years old, the muscle strength increases and after 35 years old it will decreases (Lynch et al 1999). According to Murata et al (2010), as the human grow older, function of their hand will be decreased and this happened due to the changes of hand muscle. However, there was another study which stated that the handgrip strength can also be influenced by the position of the elbow and the size of hand (Espana-Romero et al 2010;Murugan et al 2013).…”