4 minute read
COSMIC
by CHeBA
COSMIC (Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium) is an international consortium to combine data from population-based longitudinal cohorts studies to identify common risk factors for dementia and cognitive decline.
Advertisement
By the end of 2020 there were 42 international studies participating in COSMIC. For a full list of studies involved, see: https://cheba.unsw.edu.au/consortia/cosmic/studies
The major highlights for COSMIC in 2020 include:
1. Signing an MOU with a new study: the Atahualpa Project - Ecuador; 2. Six new projects were started, led by either CHeBA researchers or international workgroups: a. Sex differences in risk factors for dementia and cognitive decline; Dr Darren Lipnicki, COSMIC Study Coordinatorb. The prevalence of poor mobility in older adults; c. Social health and reserve in the dementia patient journey project; d. Differential effect of family history on the risk for dementia by sex; e. The global burden of dementia; f. White matter lesions and their neuropsychological correspondence. 3. Eight papers were published: a. Maasakkers et al. The association of sedentary behaviour and cognitive function in people without dementia: A coordinated analysis across five cohort studies. Sports Med. 2020 Feb;50(2):403-413; b. Turana et al. Factors associated with odour identification in older Indonesian and white Australian adults. Aging Clin Exp Res. 2020 Feb;32(2):215-221; c. Makkar et al. APOE ε4 and the Influence of Sex, Age, Vascular Risk Factors, and Ethnicity on Cognitive Decline. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2020 May 12;glaa116; d. Makkar et al. Education and the moderating roles of age, sex, ethnicity and apolipoprotein epsilon 4 on the risk of cognitive impairment. Arch Gerontol Geriatr. 2020 Jul 13;91:104112; e. Bae et al. Does parity matter in women’s risk of dementia?: a COSMIC collaboration cohort study. BMC Med. 2020 Aug 5;18(1):210. doi: 10.1186/s12916-020-01671-1; f. Carles et al. A Cross-National Study of Depression in Pre-clinical Alzheimer’s Disease: a COSMIC Collaboration Study. Alzheimers Dement. 2020 Sep 3. doi: 10.1002/alz.12149; g. Bae et al. Parity and the risk of incident dementia: a COSMIC collaboration cohort study. Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci. 2020 Oct 20;29:e176; h. Roehr et al. Estimating prevalence of subjective cognitive decline across international cohort studies of ageing: A COSMIC study. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2020;12(1):167. 4. Holding virtual COSMIC collaborators meetings for Europe/Asia and USA/South America, including presentations from project leaders; 5. Listing on the SYNCHROS site: https://repository.synchros.eu/network/cosmic 6. Receiving supplementary NIH funding to develop Dementia Platform Australia (DPAU), an online resource for researchers to access COSMIC metadata, and to streamline project proposals and data access.
More Years of Education Reduces Risk of Dementia
An international research study led by CHeBA has provided further support to the finding that more years of education are associated with a decreased risk of dementia.
The research, which compared people who had only completed elementary school with those who had completed middle or high school, used data from 30,785 older individuals aged 55-103 across 14 different countries.
Lead author Dr Steve Makkar said those who had completed middle or high school had lower chances of developing cognitive impairment, whereas those who had not completed elementary school were at greater risk of dementia. The research, published in Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, examined associations between education and late-life cognitive impairment, which was determined by scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE); a screening test for dementia.
Data were provided by 18 international studies of ageing represented by Australia, Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States; all of which are members of COSMIC.
Compared to men, women showed a stronger association between middle school completion and reduced risk of cognitive impairment. Asian people showed stronger associations between having completed high school and a lower risk of cognitive impairment when compared to White people.
Among people with a variant of the APOE gene known to be a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, only high school completion was associated with a reduced risk of cognitive impairment. However, the effects of the APOE gene variant differed among Asian, Black and White people.
Research using data provided by 8 studies of ageing across 7 countries involved in COSMIC suggests that depression is more likely to be attributable to dementia-related brain changes than a risk factor or reaction to the disease.
Findings were published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia – The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. This study looked at the associations between depression and dementia was conducted using data for 646 older individuals who developed dementia.
The association between years to dementia diagnosis and successive depressive states was assessed using a mixed effect logistic regression model. The researchers found that, in general, the chances of having depression increased with increasing proximity to the diagnosis of dementia, despite inter-cultural variability in depression rates.
The findings indicate that depression is less likely to be a risk factor or contributing cause of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias - and more likely a direct result of the brain changes that accompany dementia.
