You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 73, Issue 7
  • Temporal trends in cognitive function of older US adults associated with population changes in demographic and cardiovascular profiles

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Research report
Temporal trends in cognitive function of older US adults associated with population changes in demographic and cardiovascular profiles
  1. Michael Bancks1,
  2. Alvaro Alonso2,
  3. Norrina Allen3,
  4. Kristine Yaffe4,5,
  5. Mercedes Carnethon3
  1. 1 Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA
  2. 2 Department of Epidemiology, Emory University School of Public Health, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
  3. 3 Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  4. 4 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA
  5. 5 Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Michael Bancks, Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA; mbancks{at}wakehealth.edu

Abstract

Background Recent estimates suggest that dementia incidence is decreasing in the US possibly due to better management of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, but these studies lack repeated cross-sectional assessment among a representative US sample. Our objective was to assess temporal trends in cognitive performance in relation to CVD risk factors among older National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) participants.

Methods We used repeated cross-sectional assessment of 5711 participants ≥60 years of age from four NHANES cycles: 1999–2000, 2001–2002, 2011–2012 and 2013–2014. Cognitive function was assessed during each cycle with the Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST). We estimated mean DSST score at each cycle and annual trend in DSST before and after adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, smoking status, blood pressure, glucose status and body mass index.

Results DSST scores was significantly higher for 2011–2012 (difference: 6.7, 95% CI 4.4 to 9.0) and 2013–2014 (difference: 6.2, 95% CI 4.0 to 8.5), but not 2001–2002 (difference: 2.3, 95% CI −0.01 to 4.6) as compared with 1999–2000 before adjustment. We observed a linear trend for higher annual DSST score before adjustment (DSST/year: 0.44, 95% CI 0.31 to 0.57) and after adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, educational attainment and CVD risk factors (DSST/year: 0.17, 95% CI 0.08 to 0.26). Educational attainment was most strongly associated with the attenuation in the trend in cognitive function (77% of trend attenuation and 20% of variance in DSST).

Conclusion Cognitive function is improving over time for US adults aged ≥60 years. These improvements are strongly associated with greater educational attainment and irrespective of the changing US demographic and cardiovascular health profiles.

  • cognition
  • cardiovascular disease risk factors
  • education
  • epidemiological methods

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2018-211985

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors MB had full access to the data in this analysis. As such, he is the guarantor of this work, takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis and affirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate and transparent account of the study being reported. All authors made substantial intellectual contributions participating in creating and designing the study, analysing and interpreting the data and reviewing this manuscript.

    • Funding MB was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number T32HL069771 to conduct the current work while at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, USA. AA was supported by the NHLBI of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U01HL096902.

    • Disclaimer The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the NHLBI; the National Institutes of Health or the US Department of Health and Human Services. MB has presented a preliminary version of this work as a poster at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Chicago, Illinois, USA, in November 2018.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.