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Abstract
Objectives: Early-life adversity is related to adult health in old age but little is known about its relation with cognitive decline.
Methods: Participants included more than 6,100 older residents (mean age = 74.9 [7.1] years; 61.8% African American) enrolled in the Chicago Health and Aging Project, a geographically defined, population-based study of risk factors for Alzheimer disease. Participants were interviewed at approximately 3-year intervals for up to 16 years. The interview included a baseline evaluation of early-life adversity, and administration of 4 brief cognitive function tests to assess change in cognitive function. We estimated the relation of early-life adversity to rate of cognitive decline in a series of mixed-effects models.
Results: In models stratified by race, and adjusted for age and sex, early-life adversity was differentially related to decline in African Americans and whites. Whereas no measure of early-life adversity related to cognitive decline in whites, both food deprivation and being thinner than average in early life were associated with a slower rate of cognitive decline in African Americans. The relations were not mediated by years of education and persisted after adjustment for cardiovascular factors.
Conclusions: Markers of early-life adversity had an unexpected protective effect on cognitive decline in African Americans.
Glossary
- MMSE=
- Mini-Mental State Examination
Footnotes
Study funding: Supported by National Institute on Aging grants R01 AG11101, R01 AG10161, R01 AG22018, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute grant R01 HL084209, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant R01 ES10902.
Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of this article.
Supplemental data at www.neurology.org
- Received March 28, 2012.
- Accepted July 30, 2012.
- © 2012 American Academy of Neurology
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