Institute and Policlinic of Occupational and Social Medicine (IPAS), Faculty of Medicine Carl Gustav Carus, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), Partner Site Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Int J Epidemiol. 2019 Dec 1;48(6):1925-1936. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyz135.
Work has been associated with cognitive health. We examined whether retirement from work is associated with a decrease in episodic memory and whether this effect differs when considering workers' occupational class.
In this prospective study using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), we examined 1629 persons aged 50-75 years who were in paid work at baseline. A two-slope random effects linear regression centred at retirement was used to study the effect of retirement on episodic memory. The potential effect modification by occupational class was examined.
While memory trajectories show slightly decreasing memory scores before and afterretirement, the decreasing rates for both periods were similar [episodic memory β2b-β2a= -0.03, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.08, 0.02]. When stratifying by occupational class, there was also no substantial difference in episodic memory trajectories before and after retirement. However, the lower occupational class showed a clear decline in episodic memory with time (pre-retirement β2a = -0.11, 95% CI -0.19, -0.03; post-retirement β2b = -0.13, 95% CI -0.19, -0.07) which was not evident for the higher occupational classes.
Our results show no observable difference in trajectories of change in episodic memory before and after retirement. However, the steeper memory decline in workers belonging to the lower occupational class may limit their prospect of prolonging their working lives. Hence enrichment programmes for the prevention of memory decline for these workers should be considered.
工作与认知健康有关。我们研究了退休是否与情景记忆下降有关，以及考虑到工人的职业阶层，这种影响是否不同。
在这项使用英国老龄化纵向研究（ELSA）的前瞻性研究中，我们检查了 1629 名基线时从事有偿工作的 50-75 岁人群。使用以退休为中心的双斜率随机效应线性回归来研究退休对情景记忆的影响。还检查了职业阶层的潜在效应修饰作用。
虽然记忆轨迹在退休前后显示出记忆评分略有下降，但两个时期的下降率相似[情景记忆β2b-β2a=-0.03，95%置信区间（CI）-0.08，0.02]。按职业阶层分层时，退休前后情景记忆轨迹也没有明显差异。然而，较低的职业阶层随着时间的推移表现出明显的情景记忆下降（退休前β2a=-0.11，95%CI-0.19，-0.03；退休后β2b=-0.13，95%CI-0.19，-0.07），而较高的职业阶层则没有明显的变化。
我们的研究结果表明，退休前后情景记忆变化轨迹没有明显差异。然而，属于较低职业阶层的工人记忆下降更为陡峭，这可能限制了他们延长工作寿命的前景。因此，应考虑为这些工人制定预防记忆下降的充实计划。
