Snowdon D A, Greiner L H, Markesbery W R
Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40536-0230, USA.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2000 Apr;903:34-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2000.tb06347.x.
Findings from the Nun Study indicate that low linguistic ability in early life has a strong association with dementia and premature death in late life. In the present study, we investigated the relationship of linguistic ability in early life to the neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease and cerebrovascular disease. The analyses were done on a subset of 74 participants in the Nun Study for whom we had handwritten autobiographies completed some time between the ages of 19 and 37 (mean = 23 years). An average of 62 years after writing the autobiographies, when the participants were 78 to 97 years old, they died and their brains were removed for our neuropathologic studies. Linguistic ability in early life was measured by the idea (proposition) density of the autobiographies, i.e., a standard measure of the content of ideas in text samples. Idea density scores from early life had strong inverse correlations with the severity of Alzheimer's disease pathology in the neocortex: Correlations between idea density scores and neurofibrillary tangle counts were -0.59 for the frontal lobe, -0.48 for the temporal lobe, and -0.49 for the parietal lobe (all p values < 0.0001). Idea density scores were unrelated to the severity of atherosclerosis of the major arteries at the base of the brain and to the presence of lacunar and large brain infarcts. Low linguistic ability in early life may reflect suboptimal neurological and cognitive development, which might increase susceptibility to the development of Alzheimer's disease pathology in late life.
修女研究的结果表明，早年语言能力较低与晚年患痴呆症和过早死亡密切相关。在本研究中，我们调查了早年语言能力与阿尔茨海默病和脑血管病神经病理学之间的关系。分析是针对修女研究中的74名参与者进行的，我们有他们在19岁至37岁之间（平均23岁）某个时间完成的手写自传。在写完自传平均62年后，当参与者年龄在78岁至97岁之间时，他们去世，其大脑被取出用于我们的神经病理学研究。早年的语言能力通过自传的思想（命题）密度来衡量，即文本样本中思想内容的一种标准度量。早年的思想密度得分与新皮质中阿尔茨海默病病理的严重程度呈强烈负相关：思想密度得分与神经原纤维缠结计数之间的相关性，额叶为-0.59，颞叶为-0.48，顶叶为-0.49（所有p值<0.0001）。思想密度得分与脑底部主要动脉的动脉粥样硬化严重程度以及腔隙性和大面积脑梗死的存在无关。早年语言能力较低可能反映了神经和认知发育欠佳，这可能会增加晚年患阿尔茨海默病病理的易感性。
