Levine Morgan E, Harrati Amal, Crimmins Eileen M
Department of Pathology, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
Biodemography Soc Biol. 2018;64(2):83-101. doi: 10.1080/19485565.2018.1552513. Epub 2018 Dec 20.
Aging is a major risk factor for both normal and pathological cognitive decline. However, individuals vary in their rate of age-related decline. We developed an easily interpretable composite measure of cognitive age, and related both the level of cognitive age and cognitive slope to sociodemographic, genetic, and disease indicators and examine its prediction of dementia transition. Using a sample of 19,594 participants from the Health and Retirement Study, cognitive age was derived from a set of performance tests administered at each wave. Our findings reveal different conclusions as they relate to levels versus slopes of cognitive age, with more pronounced differences by sex and race/ethnicity for absolute levels of cognitive decline rather than for rates of declines. We also find that both level and slope of cognitive age are inversely related to education, as well as increased for persons with APOE ε4 and/or diabetes. Finally, results show that the slope in cognitive age predicts subsequent dementia among non-demented older adults. Overall, our study suggests that this measure is applicable to cross-sectional and longitudinal studies on cognitive aging, decline, and dementia with the goal of better understanding individual differences in cognitive decline.
衰老是正常和病理性认知衰退的主要风险因素。然而，个体在与年龄相关的衰退速度上存在差异。我们开发了一种易于解释的认知年龄综合测量方法，并将认知年龄水平和认知斜率与社会人口统计学、遗传和疾病指标相关联，同时考察其对痴呆症转变的预测能力。利用来自健康与退休研究的19594名参与者的样本，认知年龄是根据每次随访时进行的一组表现测试得出的。我们的研究结果在认知年龄水平与斜率方面得出了不同结论，在认知衰退的绝对水平上，按性别和种族/族裔划分的差异更为明显，而非衰退率方面。我们还发现，认知年龄的水平和斜率均与教育程度呈负相关，并且携带APOE ε4和/或患有糖尿病的人其认知年龄会增加。最后，结果表明认知年龄斜率可预测非痴呆老年人随后是否会患痴呆症。总体而言，我们的研究表明，该测量方法适用于关于认知衰老、衰退和痴呆症的横断面和纵向研究，目的是更好地理解认知衰退中的个体差异。
