Introduction:
In this multicenter study on subjective cognitive decline (SCD) in community-based and memory clinic settings, we assessed the (1) incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and non-AD dementia and (2) determinants of progression to dementia.
Methods:
Eleven cohorts provided 2978 participants with SCD and 1391 controls. We estimated dementia incidence and identified risk factors using Cox proportional hazards models.
Results:
In SCD, incidence of dementia was 17.7 (95% Poisson confidence interval 15.2–20.3)/1000 person-years (AD: 11.5 [9.6–13.7], non-AD: 6.1 [4.7–7.7]), compared with 14.2 (11.3–17.6) in controls (AD: 10.1 [7.7–13.0], non-AD: 4.1 [2.6–6.0]). The risk of dementia was strongly increased in SCD in a memory clinic setting but less so in a community-based setting. In addition, higher age (hazard ratio 1.1 [95% confidence interval 1.1–1.1]), lower Mini-Mental State Examination (0.7 [0.66–0.8]), and apolipoprotein E ε4 (1.8 [1.3–2.5]) increased the risk of dementia.
Discussion:
SCD can precede both AD and non-AD dementia. Despite their younger age, individuals with SCD in a memory clinic setting have a higher risk of dementia than those in community-based cohorts.
Our findings suggest that cognitively intact older men compared with women have higher resilience to pathophysiological processes of Alzheimer's disease.
Background
Lack of awareness of cognitive decline (ACD) is common in late-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Recent studies showed that ACD can also be reduced in the early stages.
Methods
We described different trends of evolution of ACD over 3 years in a cohort of memory-complainers and their association to amyloid burden and brain metabolism. We studied the impact of ACD at baseline on cognitive scores’ evolution and the association between longitudinal changes in ACD and in cognitive score.
Results
76.8% of subjects constantly had an accurate ACD (reference class). 18.95% showed a steadily heightened ACD and were comparable to those with accurate ACD in terms of demographic characteristics and AD biomarkers. 4.25% constantly showed low ACD, had significantly higher amyloid burden than the reference class, and were mostly men. We found no overall effect of baseline ACD on cognitive scores’ evolution and no association between longitudinal changes in ACD and in cognitive scores.
Conclusions
ACD begins to decrease during the preclinical phase in a group of individuals, who are of great interest and need to be further characterized.
Trial registration
The present study was conducted as part of the INSIGHT-PreAD study. The identification number of INSIGHT-PreAD study (ID-RCB) is 2012-A01731-42.
Distinct classes of cognitive trajectories were associated with risk and protective factors of AD. These associations support the notion that the identified cognitive trajectories reflect different risk for AD that may be useful for selecting high-risk individuals for intervention trials.
Neuroinflammation, a key early pathomechanistic alteration of Alzheimer's disease, may represent either a detrimental or a compensatory mechanism or both (according to the disease stage). YKL-40, a glycoprotein highly expressed in differentiated glial cells, is a candidate biomarker for in vivo tracking neuroinflammation in humans. We performed a longitudinal study in a monocentric cohort of cognitively healthy individuals at risk for Alzheimer's disease exploring whether age, sex, and the apolipoprotein E ε4 allele affect plasma YKL-40 concentrations. We investigated whether YKL-40 is associated with brain amyloid-β (Aβ) deposition, neuronal activity, and neurodegeneration as assessed via neuroimaging biomarkers. Finally, we investigated whether YKL-40 may predict cognitive performance. We found an age-associated increase of YKL-40 and observed that men display higher concentrations than women, indicating a potential sexual dimorphism. Moreover, YKL-40 was positively associated with memory performance and negatively associated with brain Aβ deposition (but not with metabolic signal). Consistent with translational studies, our results suggest a potentially protective effect of glia on incipient brain Aβ accumulation and neuronal homeostasis.
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