Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn
December 2024
Many older adults report subjective cognitive decline (SCD); however, the specific types of complaints most strongly associated with early disease detection remain unclear. This study examines which complaints from the Everyday Cognition Scales (ECog) are associated with progression from normal cognition to mild cognitive impairment (MCI)/dementia. 415 older adults were monitored annually for 5 years, on average.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Childhood adversity harms neurodevelopment. Literature on late-life brain health is limited, and findings on late-life cognition are mixed.
Methods: Pooling data from Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (KHANDLE) and Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans (STAR) cohorts, we assessed the impact of childhood adversity (factor score from seven self-reported items) on (a) executive function and verbal memory decline using linear mixed effects models (n = 2447), (b) structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using linear regression (n = 618), and (c) amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) using generalized linear models (n = 331), all adjusting for early-life demographic and socioeconomic confounders.
Background: Multidomain lifestyle interventions may have the potential to slow biological aging as captured by deficit accumulation frailty indices. We describe the distribution and composition of the 49-component frailty index (FI) developed by the U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInformal caregivers of people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) are at risk of poor mental health. This study aimed to investigate the feasibility and validity of studying caregivers' mental stressors using online caregiving forum data (March 2018-February 2022) and natural language processing and machine learning (NLP/ML). NLP/ML topic modeling generated eight prominent topics, which we compared with qualitatively defined themes and the existing caregiving framework to assess validity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Prior studies associate late-life community disadvantage with worse brain health. It is relatively unknown if childhood community disadvantage associates with late-life brain health.
Objective: To test associations between childhood residence in an economically disadvantaged community, individual income and education, and late-life cortical brain volumes and white matter integrity.
Background: We aimed to develop risk tools for dementia, stroke, myocardial infarction (MI), and diabetes, for adults aged ≥ 65 years using shared risk factors.
Methods: Data were obtained from 10 population-based cohorts (N = 41,755) with median follow-up time (years) for dementia, stroke, MI, and diabetes of 6.2, 7.
Introduction: Few studies have examined the relationship between education and cognition among the oldest-old.
Methods: Cognitive assessments were conducted biannually for 803 participants (62.6% women) of LifeAfter90, a longitudinal study of individuals ≥ 90 years old.
Lancet Healthy Longev
September 2024
Background: Intersectionality has rarely been considered in research studies of cognitive ageing. We investigated whether life-course financial mobility is differentially associated with later-life memory function and decline across intersectional identities defined by gender, and race and ethnicity.
Methods: Data were from two harmonised multiethnic cohorts (the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences cohort and the Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans cohort) in northern California, USA (n=2340).
Background And Purpose: Clinicians use reference values to contextualize physical performance scores, but data are sparse in individuals 90 years and older and racial/ethnic diversity is limited in existing studies. Gait speed provides valuable information about an individual's health status. Slow gait speed is associated with falls, cognitive decline, and mortality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Inflammation has been proposed as a mechanism linking cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) to increased risk of dementia. However, whether an anti-inflammatory diet can support brain and cognitive health among people with CMDs is unclear.
Objective: To examine CMD status and dietary inflammatory potential in association with dementia risk and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures using joint effect analysis.
Elucidating the mechanisms by which late-life neurodegeneration causes cognitive decline requires understanding why some individuals are more resilient than others to the effects of brain change on cognition (cognitive reserve). Currently, there is no way of measuring cognitive reserve that is valid (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: School-based social support for Black students may mediate or modify the association between school segregation and late-life cognition.
Methods: Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans participants (n = 574) reported segregated school attendance and school-based social support. Associations of segregated schooling with domain-specific cognitive outcomes and effect modification or mediation by school-based social support were evaluated with linear mixed models.
Introduction: There is a dearth of research on cognitive aging and dementia in Asian Americans, particularly in Vietnamese Americans, the fourth largest Asian subgroup in the United States.
Methods: The Vietnamese Insights into Cognitive Aging Program (VIP) investigates early life adversity and war-related trauma and their associations with cognitive health in a community-based sample of older Vietnamese Americans in Northern California (i.e.
Literature shows heterogeneous age-standardized dementia incidence rates across US Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI), but no estimates of population-representative dementia incidence exist due to lack of AANHPI longitudinal probability samples. We compared harmonized characteristics between AANHPI Kaiser Permanente Northern California members (KPNC cohort) and the target population of AANHPI 60+ with private or Medicare insurance using the California Health Interview Survey. We used stabilized inverse odds of selection weights (sIOSW) to estimate ethnicity-specific crude and age-standardized dementia incidence rates and cumulative risk by age 90 in the target population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement
August 2024
Introduction: Although poor glycemic control is associated with dementia, it is unknown if variability in glycemic control, even in those with optimal glycosylated hemoglobin A (HbA) levels, increases dementia risk.
Methods: Among 171,964 people with type 2 diabetes, we evaluated the hazard of dementia association with long-term HbA variability using five operationalizations, including standard deviation (SD), adjusting for demographics and comorbidities.
Results: The mean baseline age was 61 years (48% women).
Dementia incidence is lower among Asian Americans than among Whites, despite higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes, a well-known dementia risk factor. Determinants of dementia, including type 2 diabetes, have rarely been studied in Asian Americans. We followed 4846 Chinese, 4129 Filipino, 2784 Japanese, 820 South Asian, and 123 360 non-Latino White members of a California-based integrated health-care delivery system from 2002 to 2020.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor Black students in the United States, attending schools with a higher proportion of White students is associated with worse mental and physical health outcomes in adolescence/early adulthood. To our knowledge, no prior studies have evaluated the association between school racial/ethnic composition from kindergarten through grade 12 and later-life mental health. In a cohort of Black adults aged ≥50 years in Northern California who retrospectively reported (2017-2020) school racial/ethnic composition for grades 1, 6, 9, and 12, we assessed the association between attending a school with mostly Black students versus not and mid-/late-life depressive symptoms (8-item Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) depression score, standardized to the 2000 US adult population) using age-, sex/gender-, southern US birth-, and parental education-adjusted generalized estimating equations, and assessed effect modification by the presence of a caring teacher/staff member.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Most prior research on physical activity (PA) and cognition is based on predominantly white cohorts and focused on associations of PA with mean (average) cognition versus the distribution of cognition. Quantile regression offers a novel way to quantify how PA affects cognition across the entire distribution.
Methods: The Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences study includes 30% white, 19% black, 25% Asian, and 26% Latinx adults age 65+ living in Northern California (n = 1600).
Alzheimers Dement
May 2024
Introduction: Depressive symptoms are associated with higher risk of dementia, but how they impact cognition in diverse populations is unclear.
Methods: Asian, Black, Latino, or White participants (n = 2227) in the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (age 65+) and the Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans (age 50+) underwent up to three waves of cognitive assessments over 4 years. Multilevel models stratified by race/ethnicity were used to examine whether depressive symptoms were associated with cognition or cognitive decline and whether associations differed by race/ethnicity.
Introduction: The prevalence of poor sleep quality and sleep apnea differs by race and ethnicity and may contribute to racial disparities in cognitive aging. We investigated whether sleep quality and sleep apnea risk were associated with cognitive function and decline and whether the associations differed by race/ethnicity.
Methods: Participants from the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (KHANDLE; = 1690; mean age: 75.
Prior research has shown that some personality traits are associated with cognitive outcomes and may confirm risk or protection against cognitive decline. The present study expands on previous work to examine the association between a more comprehensive set of psychological characteristics and cognitive performance in a diverse cohort of older adults. We also examine whether controlling for brain atrophy influences the association between psychological characteristics and cognitive function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with higher risk of chronic disease, but little is known about the association with late life cognitive decline. We examined the longitudinal association between ACEs and late-life cognitive decline in the Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans (STAR).
Design: Linear mixed models with random intercepts and slope examined the association of individual and composite ACEs with cognitive change adjusting for years from baseline (timescale), baseline age, sex, parental education, childhood socioeconomic status and childhood social support.
Importance: Prior studies suggested that metformin may be associated with reduced dementia incidence, but associations may be confounded by disease severity and prescribing trends. Cessation of metformin therapy in people with diabetes typically occurs due to signs of kidney dysfunction but sometimes is due to less serious adverse effects associated with metformin.
Objective: To investigate the association of terminating metformin treatment for reasons unrelated to kidney dysfunction with dementia incidence.