Abstract:
Subjective health ratings are associated with dementia risk such that those who rate their health more poorly have increased risk for dementia. The genetic and environmental mechanisms underlying this association are unclear, as prior research cannot rule out whether the association is due to genetic confounds. The current study addresses this gap in two samples of twins, one from Sweden (N = 548) and one from Denmark (N = 4,373). Using genetically-informed, bivariate regression models, we assessed whether additive genetic effects explained the association between subjective health and dementia risk as indexed by a latent variable proxy measure. Age at intake, sex, education, depressive symptomatology, and follow-up time between subjective health and dementia risk assessments were included as covariates. Results indicate that genetic variance and other sources of confounding accounted for the majority of the effect of subjective health ratings on dementia risk. After adjusting for genetic confounding and other covariates, a small correlation was observed between subjective health and latent dementia risk in the Danish sample (rE = - .09, p < .05). The results provide further support for the genetic association between subjective health and dementia risk, and also suggest that subjective ratings of health measures may be useful for predicting dementia risk.
摘要:
主观健康评级与痴呆症风险相关,因此那些对健康评级较差的人患痴呆症的风险增加。这种关联的遗传和环境机制尚不清楚,因为先前的研究不能排除这种关联是否是由于遗传混淆。目前的研究在两个双胞胎样本中解决了这个差距,一个来自瑞典(N=548),一个来自丹麦(N=4,373)。利用基因知情,双变量回归模型,我们评估了加性遗传效应是否解释了主观健康与痴呆风险之间的关联,该关联通过潜在变量替代测量进行了索引.摄入年龄,性别,教育,抑郁症状,将主观健康和痴呆风险评估之间的随访时间作为协变量.结果表明,遗传方差和其他混杂来源占主观健康评级对痴呆症风险的影响的大部分。在调整了遗传混杂因素和其他协变量后,在丹麦样本中,观察到主观健康状况与潜在痴呆风险之间存在小的相关性(rE=-.09,p<.05).结果为主观健康与痴呆风险之间的遗传关联提供了进一步的支持。并且还表明健康测量的主观评级可能对预测痴呆风险有用。