Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Semantic verbal fluency (SVF) performance is sensitive to cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) dementia. Optimal SVF performance can be achieved by using strategies such as grouping words into semantic clusters. Prior studies yielded conflicting results regarding association between mean size of semantic clusters (MCS) and future risk of dementia; however, most studies showed that MCS is sensitive to educational attainment. Our objective was to examine interaction between education and MCS with respect to predicting future risk of dementia. Participants - subset of the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging (MCSA) cohort including those who progressed to MCI (n = 337) and AD dementia (n = 72) during the study, and a random sample (n = 345) of those who remained cognitively normal (CN). MCS was automatically calculated using log-likelihood to estimate the strength of semantic relatedness between pairs of animal names found in a held-out training set of CN participants (n = 600). In the 345 CN participants, linear regression was used to test for interaction between MCS and education, adjusted for age and sex, in predicting memory, executive, and visuospatial performance at baseline assessment. Cox models were used to estimate risk of future dementia in low (< 12 years) and high (>= 12 years) education groups with MCS as a predictor adjusted for traditional SVF score, number of repeated words, and sex. Interaction between MCS and education in CN participants was associated with executive (p=0.02) and memory (p=0.04) domains. In all participants, MCS was a significant predictor of time to either MCI or AD dementia diagnosis only in the low education group (HR: 0.58; 95% CI: 0.39-0.85). Kaplan-Meyer curves for the groups are illustrated in Figure. Strategy used to maintain SVF performance is mediated by education. Producing larger semantic clusters is associated with lower risk of progressing to dementia; however, this effect is only clearly pronounced in the low education group. These results may have implications for studies of clustering behavior in SVF responses as well as for clinical estimates of dementia risk.
Source: Alzheimer s & Dementia
Institutions: University of Minnesota, Mayo Clinic
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2545915804