Affiliations: [a] Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX, USA | [b] Department of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX, USA | [c] Department of Family and Community Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX, USA | [d] South Texas Veterans' Health System Audie L. Murphy Division GRECC, San Antonio, TX, USA
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Dr. Donald R. Royall, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, TX 78284-7792, USA. Tel.: +1 210 567 1255; Fax: +1 210 567 1269; E-mail: royall@uthscsa.edu.
Abstract: The temporal growth of Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology cannot be easily determined because autopsy data are available only after death. We combined autopsy data from 471 participants in the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study (HAAS) into latent factor measures of neurofibrillary tangle and neuritic plaque counts. These were associated with intercept and slope parameters from a latent growth curve (LGC) model of 9-year change in cognitive test performance in 3244 autopsied and non-autopsied HAAS participants. Change in cognition fully mediated the association between baseline cognitive performance and AD lesions counts. The mediation effect of cognitive change on both AD lesion models effectively dates them within the period of cognitive surveillance. Additional analyses could lead to an improved understanding of lesion propagation in AD.
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, longitudinal, neuropathology, old age
