Publications by authors named "Maria Lima Costa"

To investigate the elements of the social network associated with frailty syndrome in older Brazilian adults. Baseline data from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil, 2015-2016) were used. Frailty was defined by the Fried phenotype (unintentional weight loss, exhaustion, weakness, slowness, and low level of physical activity).

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  • - The study aimed to explore how family characteristics, like having a partner or children, affect loneliness in Brazilians aged 50 and older, considering both the presence and severity of loneliness.
  • - Data was collected from over 7,000 participants in a national aging study, using a specific loneliness scale to measure loneliness alongside family dynamics such as marital status and living arrangements.
  • - Findings showed that family relationships with partners significantly impacted loneliness levels, with those cohabiting reporting lower loneliness; results suggest that enhancing social support for older adults with smaller family units is important.
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Introduction: Alzheimer's disease and other dementia have a higher incidence among women and that risk factors specific to the female sex could be involved. Few studies looked into female reproductive factors and their association with dementia in low-and middle-income countries.

Materials And Methods: We analyzed the baseline data from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil) and included data from 2594 women aged 60 years and older.

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  • The study investigates how cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM) and depression affect cognitive function in older adults, aiming to understand their individual and combined impacts.
  • It harmonizes data from 14 international cohort studies and utilizes various scales to assess CMM and depression among participants who did not have dementia at the start of the study.
  • Findings include the analysis of over 30,000 older adults, revealing that both CMM and depression are linked to cognitive decline, with further validation through additional studies across different settings.
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Objective: To investigate the association between depressive symptoms and social support among a representative sample of the Brazilian population aged 50 years or older.

Methodology: Cross-sectional study, based on 8,074 participants of the second wave of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study on Aging - ELSI-Brasil. Depressive symptoms were screened based on the CES-D8 instrument, and social support was investigated in its structural and functional dimensions.

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Background: The prevalence of cognitive impairment no dementia (CIND) and dementia appears to be higher in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared to high-income economies. Yet few nationally representative studies from Latin American LMICs have investigated life-course socioeconomic factors associated with the susceptibility to these two cognitive conditions. Hence, the present study aimed to examine the associations of early- (education and food insecurity), mid- (employment stability), and late-life (personal income and household per capita income) socioeconomic determinants of CIND and dementia among older adults from Brazil, while simultaneously exploring whether sex plays an effect-modifier role on these associations.

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Objectives: This study aimed to determine the median age at natural menopause and analyze lifestyle, anthropometric, and dietary characteristics associated with the age at natural menopause among Brazilian women.

Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 2,731 women 50 years and over, drawn from the baseline of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil, 2015/16). Nonparametric Kaplan-Meier cumulative survivorship estimates were used to assess the median timing of natural menopause.

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This study aimed to investigate associations between neighborhood perception and sleep problems in older Brazilian adults. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 5,719 community-dwelling older adults (≥ 60 years) from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil, 2019-2021). The outcomes were self-reported sleep problems: poor sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, primary insomnia complaints, difficulty staying asleep, and waking up at dawn.

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Introduction: The LIfestyle for BRAin Health (LIBRA) index yields a dementia risk score based on modifiable lifestyle factors and is validated in Western samples. We investigated whether the association between LIBRA scores and incident dementia is moderated by geographical location or sociodemographic characteristics.

Methods: We combined data from 21 prospective cohorts across six continents (N = 31,680) and conducted cohort-specific Cox proportional hazard regression analyses in a two-step individual participant data meta-analysis.

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  • Genome-wide association studies have identified genetic risk factors but often rely on imputation panels that mainly represent European ancestry, affecting quality in underrepresented groups like Latin Americans.
  • This study examines how altering the composition of imputation reference panels impacts imputation quality in four different Latin American cohorts, specifically analyzing chromosomes 7 and X.
  • Results show that increasing the number of Latin Americans in the reference leads to better imputation quality, while excluding them, as well as adjustments in European and African representation, affects quality differently across populations and chromosomes.
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Based on a national representative sample of the population aged 50 years or older, this study aimed to estimate the prevalence of frailty among men and women, identify associated sociodemographic and health factors, and estimate the population attributable fraction. Data from the second wave (2019-2021) of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil) were used. Frailty was classified based on the number of positive items among unintentional weight loss, exhaustion, low level of physical activity, slow gait, and weakness.

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  • Immunosenescence refers to changes in the immune system with age, leading to increased biomarkers related to "Inflammaging," which is linked to various diseases in older adults.
  • This study is the first to investigate cytokines, chemokines, and growth factors in a diverse Brazilian population of older adults, analyzing blood samples from over 2,100 participants aged 50 and above.
  • Significant differences in biomarker levels were found between sexes, with some biomarkers showing age-related trends, indicating an inflammatory profile common in aging individuals.
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The objective were to describe the prevalence of underweight and overweight, assessed by body mass index (BMI), stratified by sex and age group, and to analyze the sociodemographic characteristics associated with BMI in older women and men. This is a cross-sectional analysis of 8,974 participants aged ≥ 50 years from the baseline of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brasil, 2015-2016). BMI was classified as underweight, eutrophy, and overweight according to the participant's age.

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  • Chronic kidney disease significantly impacts global health, particularly among individuals of African ancestry and those in the Americas, who are often excluded from genetic studies.
  • A comprehensive meta-analysis involving over 145,000 individuals from these groups led to the discovery of 41 significant genetic loci associated with kidney function, two of which hadn't been previously identified across any ancestry group.
  • The study emphasizes the importance of diverse populations in genetic research for better understanding kidney disease and suggests that multi-ancestry polygenic scores can improve predictive capabilities and clinical applications.
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Sleep problems, such as difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, early awakening with failure to continue sleep, and altered sleep-wake cycle, are common in the general population. This cross-sectional study with 6,929 older adults (≥ 60 years) aimed to estimate the prevalence of different types of sleep problems, their associated factors, and the population-attributable fraction of associated factors among older adults. The outcome variables consisted of self-reported sleep problems: insomnia (initial, intermediate, late, and any type of insomnia), poor sleep quality, and daytime sleepiness.

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Objective: To investigate whether having a higher number of depressive symptoms is associated with negative self-rated health (SRH) even in the absence of illness.

Methods: This is a secondary analysis of baseline data from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil), conducted in 2015-2016, using a national sample of 9,412 people aged 50 or over. SRH was dichotomized into poor or very poor and very good or excellent, good, or average.

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Introduction: Great part of Chagas disease (ChD) mortality occurs due to ventricular arrhythmias, and autonomic function (AF) may predict unfavorable outcomes. We aimed to evaluate the predictive value of AF indexes in ChD patients.

Methods: The Bambuí Study of Aging is a prospective cohort of residents ≥60 years at study onset (1997), in the southeastern Brazilian city of Bambuí (15,000 inhabitants).

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Background: Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) are a possible prodrome of cognitive decline but are understudied in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). We aimed to estimate the prevalence of SMCs in a large, nationally representative sample of older adults from Brazil and to identify sociodemographic and health-related factors that are associated with SMCs independently of objective memory.

Methods: Baseline data (n = 7831) from the ELSI-Brazil study, a national representative sample of adults aged 50 and over.

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This study aimed to investigate differences in determinants of active aging between older Brazilian and English adults and to verify the association of behavioral, personal, and social determinants with physical health. This cross-sectional study was based on the ELSI-Brazil (2015-2016) and ELSA (2016-2017) cohorts. Active aging determinants included behavior (smoking, sedentary lifestyle, and poor sleep quality), personal (cognitive function and life satisfaction), and social determinants (education, loneliness, and volunteering), according to the World Health Organization.

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Background: Sex differences in Parkinson's disease (PD) risk are well-known. However, the role of sex chromosomes in the development and progression of PD is still unclear.

Objective: The objective of this study was to perform the first X-chromosome-wide association study for PD risk in a Latin American cohort.

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This study aimed to identify dietary and anthropometric differences in older Brazilian adults (≥ 50 years old) living in urban-rural areas. This is a cross-sectional study with data from the second wave (9,949 participants) of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil) from 2019-2021. Weekly dietary intake of fruit/vegetables, beans, and fish; self-perception of salt consumption; food environment (availability of fruit/vegetables in the neighborhood and self-production of food); and objective anthropometric parameters (body mass index [BMI] and waist circumference [WC]) were evaluated.

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  • - The study evaluated how many older Brazilians (60+) follow guidelines for eating fruits and vegetables using data from over 4,900 participants in the ELSI-Brazil study conducted between 2015 and 2016.
  • - Only 12.9% of participants met the recommended intake of fruits and vegetables, with notable factors influencing this being gender, age, education level, and smoking status.
  • - The results indicate a low prevalence of healthy eating habits among this demographic, highlighting the need for public health initiatives to promote greater consumption of fruits and vegetables in older adults.
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This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the association between food consumption (meat, fish, and fruits and vegetables), anthropometric indicators (body mass index, waist circumference, and waist-to-height ratio), and frailty; and to verify whether these associations vary with edentulism. We used data from 8,629 participants of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil) (2015-16). Frailty was defined by unintentional weight loss, weakness, slow walking speed, exhaustion, and low physical activity.

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Background: The natural history of Chagas disease (ChD) in older ages is largely unknown, and it is a matter of controversy if the disease continues to progress in the elderly.

Objective: To investigate the evolution of electrocardiographic abnormalities in T. cruzi chronically infected community-dwelling elderly compared to non-infected (NChD) subjects and how it affects this population's survival in a follow-up of 14 years.

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Background: The association between social isolation and cognitive performance has been less investigated in low-to-middle-income countries (LMIC) and the presence of depression as a moderator on this association has not been examined. The authors examined the associations of social isolation and perceived loneliness with cognitive performance in the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging.

Methods: In this cross-sectional analysis, social isolation was evaluated by a composite score including marital status, social contact, and social support.

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