Interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein as predictors of cognitive decline in late midlife

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

August 15, 2014

Summary:

Objective:
Peripheral inflammatory markers are elevated in patients with dementia.
In order to assess their etiologic role, we examined
whether interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive
protein (CRP) measured in midlife predict concurrently assessed
cognition and
subsequent cognitive decline.

Methods: Mean value
of IL-6 and CRP, assessed on 5,217 persons (27.9% women) in 1991–1993
and 1997–1999 in the Whitehall II longitudinal
cohort study, were categorized into tertiles to
examine 10-year decline (assessments in 1997–1999, 2002–2004, and
2007–2009)
in standardized scores (mean = 0, SD = 1) of
memory, reasoning, and verbal fluency using mixed models. Mini-Mental
State Examination
(MMSE) was administered in 2002–2004 and
2007–2009; decline ≥3 points was modeled with logistic regression.
Analyses were
adjusted for baseline age, sex, education, and
ethnicity; further analyses were also adjusted for smoking, obesity,
Framingham
cardiovascular risk score, and chronic diseases
(cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and depression).

Results: In cross-sectional analysis, reasoning was 0.08 SD (95% confidence interval [CI] −0.14, −0.03) lower in participants with
high compared to low IL-6. In longitudinal analysis, 10-year decline in reasoning was greater (ptrend
= 0.01) among participants with high IL-6 (−0.35; 95% CI −0.37, −0.33)
than those with low IL-6 (−0.29; 95% CI −0.31,
−0.27). In addition, participants with high IL-6
had 1.81 times greater odds ratio of decline in MMSE (95% CI 1.20,
2.71).
CRP was not associated with decline in any test.

Conclusions: Elevated IL-6 but not CRP in midlife predicts cognitive decline; the combined cross-sectional and longitudinal effects over
the 10-year observation period corresponded to an age effect of 3.9 years.

Received November 8, 2013.
Accepted in final form March 10, 2014.

© 2014 American Academy of Neurology

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published in

Neurology

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 83 , p.486 -493

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000000665

ISSN

283878

Subjects

Notes

Open Access article

© 2014 American Academy of Neurology. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

#522599

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest