4.5 Article

Rheumatoid Arthritis, Cognitive Impairment, and Neuroimaging Biomarkers: Results from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging

Journal

JOURNAL OF ALZHEIMERS DISEASE
Volume 89, Issue 3, Pages 943-954

Publisher

IOS PRESS
DOI: 10.3233/JAD-220368

Keywords

Cognitive decline; cognitive impairment; dementia; magnetic resonance imaging; rheumatoid arthritis

Categories

Funding

  1. NIH: NIA [R01AG068192]
  2. NIAMS [R01 AR46849]
  3. NIH [U01 AG006786, P30 AG062677, R37 AG011378, R01 AG041851, R01 NS097495]
  4. Alexander Family Alzheimer's Disease Research Professorship of the Mayo Clinic
  5. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
  6. Schuler Foundation
  7. GHR
  8. Liston Award
  9. Rochester Epidemiology Project [R01 AG034676]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is not associated with cognitive decline and dementia risk, but RA patients show more abnormal cerebrovascular pathology on neuroimaging.
Background: Observational studies suggested that dementia risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is higher than in the general population. Objective: To examine the associations of RA with cognitive decline and dementia, and neuroimaging biomarkers of aging, Alzheimer's disease, and vascular pathology in adult participants in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging (MCSA). Methods: Participants with RA were matched 1:3 on age, sex, education, and baseline cognitive diagnosis to participants without RA. RA cases with MRI were also matched with non-cases with available MRI. All available imaging studies (i.e., amyloid and FDG PET, sMRI, and FLAIR) were included. The study included 104 participants with RA and 312 without RA (mean age (standard deviation, SD) 75.0 (10.4) years, 33% male and average follow-up (SD) 4.2 (3.8) years). Results: Groups were similar in cognitive decline and risk of incident dementia. Among participants with neuroimaging, participants withRA(n = 33) and withoutRA(n = 98) had similar amyloid burden and neurodegeneration measures, including regions sensitive to aging and dementia, but greater mean white matter hyperintensity volume relative to the total intracranial volume (mean (SD)%: 1.12 (0.57)% versus 0.76 (0.69)% of TIV, p = 0.01), and had higher mean (SD) number of cortical infarctions (0.24 (0.44) versus 0.05 (0.33), p = 0.02). Conclusion: Although cognitive decline and dementia risk were similar in participants with and without RA, participants with RA had more abnormal cerebrovascular pathology on neuroimaging. Future studies should examine the mechanisms underlying these changes and potential implications for prognostication and prevention of cognitive decline in RA.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.5
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available