Olofsson Jonas K, Rönnlund Michael, Nordin Steven, Nyberg Lars, Nilsson Lars-Göran, Larsson Maria
Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
Behav Genet. 2009 Sep;39(5):496-503. doi: 10.1007/s10519-009-9289-5. Epub 2009 Jul 25.
Olfactory impairments are present in common neurodegenerative disorders and predict conversion to dementia in non-demented individuals with cognitive impairment. In cognitively intact elderly, evidence is sparse regarding the role of olfactory deficits in predicting cognitive impairment. The present study investigated predictors of 5-year prospective decline in the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) in a large (n = 501), population-based sample of elderly (65-90 years) individuals. All participants were genotyped for the ApoE gene, assessed for health factors, and were non-demented at the baseline assessment. After partialling out the influences of demographic and health-factors at baseline and dementia at follow-up, poor odor identification ability in combination with older age and the ApoE-epsilon4 allele predicted larger prospective global cognitive decline. This effect could not be produced by a vocabulary test. In sum, the findings suggest that an olfactory deficit can dissociate between benign and malign global cognitive development in non-demented, very old epsilon4-carriers, who are at high risk of developing dementia.
嗅觉障碍在常见的神经退行性疾病中存在，并且在认知功能受损的非痴呆个体中可预测其向痴呆的转化。在认知功能完好的老年人中，关于嗅觉缺陷在预测认知功能障碍方面的作用，证据并不充分。本研究在一个大型（n = 501）、基于人群的65至90岁老年人样本中，调查了简易精神状态检查表（MMSE）5年前瞻性下降的预测因素。所有参与者均进行了载脂蛋白E（ApoE）基因分型，评估了健康因素，且在基线评估时无痴呆。在排除基线时人口统计学和健康因素以及随访时痴呆的影响后，气味识别能力差与高龄以及ApoE-ε4等位基因共同预测了更大的前瞻性整体认知衰退。词汇测试无法产生这种效果。总之，研究结果表明，嗅觉缺陷可区分非痴呆、高龄ε4携带者中良性和恶性的整体认知发展，这些携带者患痴呆的风险很高。
