Neuritic And Diffuse Plaque Associations With Memory In Non-Cognitively Impaired Elderly

Department

neurobiology

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The presence of Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related neuropathology among cognitively normal individuals has been well documented. It has been proposed that these individuals may represent a pre-clinical AD population. Previous studies have demonstrated a negative association between the presence of both amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques and neurofibrillary tangles with ante-mortem cognitive performance, a relationship which is likely influenced by a number of factors including age and APOE ϵ4 carrier status. The present study determined whether the presence of neuritic plaques (NPs) and diffuse plaques (DPs) are associated with performance in a number of cognitive domains after accounting for APOE ϵ4 carrier status and neurofibrillary tangle presence in a cohort of 123 older participants from the Rush Religious Order Study who died with a premortem clinical diagnosis of no cognitive impairment (NCI). After adjusting for age at death, education, gender, Braak stage, and APOE ϵ4 carrier status, the presence of NPs was associated with lower performance in the cognitive domains of Global Cognition (p=0.002), Episodic Memory (p=0.03), Semantic Memory (p=0.009), and Visuospatial performance (p=0.006), while DPs showed no association with any cognitive domain examined. These results suggest that decreases in cognition in elderly NCI individuals are associated with an increase in NPs and not DPs when age at death, education, gender, APOE ϵ4 status, and Braak stage are taken into consideration.

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Publication Title

Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

ISSN

13872877

Volume

53

Issue

4

First Page

1641

Last Page

1652

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.3233/JAD-160365

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