Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 13|pp 13740—13761

Cognitive enhancement of healthy older adults using hyperbaric oxygen: a randomized controlled trial

Amir Hadanny^1,^2,³, Malka Daniel-Kotovsky¹, Gil Suzin¹, Rahav Boussi-Gross¹, Merav Catalogna¹, Kobi Dagan¹, Yafit Hachmo⁵, Ramzia Abu Hamed¹, Efrat Sasson¹, Gregory Fishlev¹, Erez Lang¹, Nir Polak¹, Keren Doenyas¹, Mony Friedman¹, Sigal Tal⁴, Yonatan Zemel¹, Yair Bechor¹, Shai Efrati^1,^2,^5,⁶

¹The Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, Shamir (Assaf-Harofeh) Medical Center, Zerifin, Israel
²Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
³The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
⁴Radiology Department, Shamir Medical Center, Zerifin, Israel
⁵Research and Development Unit, Shamir Medical Center, Zerifin, Israel
⁶Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

Received: May 6, 2020Accepted: June 9, 2020Published: June 26, 2020

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103571

Copyright © 2020 Amir et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

More than half of community-dwelling individuals sixty years and older express concern about declining cognitive abilities. The current study’s aim was to evaluate hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) effect on cognitive functions in healthy aging adults.

A randomized controlled clinical trial randomized 63 healthy adults (>64) either to HBOT(n=33) or control arms(n=30) for three months. Primary endpoint included the general cognitive function measured post intervention/control. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) was evaluated by perfusion magnetic resonance imaging.

There was a significant group-by-time interaction in global cognitive function post-HBOT compared to control (p=0.0017). The most striking improvements were in attention (net effect size=0.745) and information processing speed (net effect size=0.788).

Voxel-based analysis showed significant cerebral blood flow increases in the HBOT group compared to the control group in the right superior medial frontal gyrus (BA10), right and left supplementary motor area (BA6), right middle frontal gyrus (BA6), left middle frontal gyrus (BA9), left superior frontal gyrus (BA8) and the right superior parietal gyrus (BA7).

In this study, HBOT was shown to induce cognitive enhancements in healthy aging adults via mechanisms involving regional changes in CBF. The main improvements include attention, information processing speed and executive functions, which normally decline with aging.