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The Women’s Healthy Ageing Project: A pattern of cognitive decline after brain injury
Author(s) -
Bird Stefanie,
Faux Noel G,
Szoeke Cassandra
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1002/alz.056198
Subject(s) - traumatic brain injury , neuropsychology , cognition , cognitive decline , medicine , dementia , effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance , cohort , head injury , neuropsychological assessment , psychology , gerontology , clinical psychology , psychiatry , disease
Background It is well recognised that damage sustained by traumatic brain injury (TBI) initiate injury mechanisms that continue to develop long after insult. Increasing evidence suggests TBI may lead to chronic cognitive decline and the development of dementia later in life. However, due to the low rate of TBI in the general community, there is a paucity of data on the impact of cognitive decline in community TBI. We examined longitudinal cognitive changes over a 12‐year period to determine if there was any relationship with community reported TBI. Method The Women’s Healthy Aging Project is an ongoing longitudinal cohort study of community‐dwelling Australian women. Assessments included an extensive range of measures, including neuropsychological testing of multiple cognitive domains and questions relating to head injury. In total, 110 women had complete neuropsychological testing at all three time points; from 2002, 2012 and 2014. Of these women, nine (aged 56‐65 in 2002) had a history of moderate to severe TBI. Composite cognitive scores were compared to 18 healthy controls randomly selected from the complete dataset individually matched for age, education, and APO4‐ genotype. Analyses were conducted in five datasets drawn from the complete dataset and results were averaged. Result Median scores for executive function were similar for both the TBI group and healthy controls in 2002, lower in the TBI group by 2012 and this difference increased further in 2014. Median scores for verbal episodic memory were slightly lower in the TBI group than controls in 2002 and 2012, and this difference increased in 2014. Although this initial pilot study with small samples in mid‐aged healthy women did not show statistically significant results, the observed relationships were constant over the five datasets, warranting further exploration. Conclusion In our small pilot study, we observed greater rate of decline of both executive function and verbal episodic memory in women with a history of TBI. Findings warrant a need for larger studies to explore this relationship as it indicates that community‐based reported TBI may impact cognitive performance even in early ageing. Further work will continue to explore cognitive trajectories in women with a mean age 80 at next follow‐up.