Circulating cortisol and cognitive and structural brain measures

Abstract

ObjectiveTo assess the association of early morning serum cortisol with cognitive performance and brain structural integrity in community-dwelling young and middle-aged adults without dementia.MethodsWe evaluated dementia-free Framingham Heart Study (generation 3) participants (mean age 48.5 years, 46.8% men) who underwent cognitive testing for memory, abstract reasoning, visual perception, attention, and executive function (n = 2,231) and brain MRI (n = 2018) to assess total white matter, lobar gray matter, and white matter hyperintensity volumes and fractional anisotropy (FA) measures. We used linear and logistic regression to assess the relations of cortisol (categorized in tertiles, with the middle tertile as referent) to measures of cognition, MRI volumes, presence of covert brain infarcts and cerebral microbleeds, and voxel-based microstructural white matter integrity and gray matter density, adjusting for age, sex, APOE, and vascular risk factors.ResultsHigher cortisol (highest tertile vs middle tertile) was associated with worse memory and visual perception, as well as lower total cerebral brain and occipital and frontal lobar gray matter volumes. Higher cortisol was associated with multiple areas of microstructural changes (decreased regional FA), especially in the splenium of corpus callosum and the posterior corona radiata. The association of cortisol with total cerebral brain volume varied by sex (p for interaction = 0.048); higher cortisol was inversely associated with cerebral brain volume in women (p = 0.001) but not in men (p = 0.717). There was no effect modification by the APOE4 genotype of the relations of cortisol and cognition or imaging traits.ConclusionHigher serum cortisol was associated with lower brain volumes and impaired memory in asymptomatic younger to middle-aged adults, with the association being evident particularly in women.

Circulating IGFBP‐2: a novel biomarker for incident dementia

“…Kappa values for agreement among the three raters range from 0.73 to 0.90 . We also included peak width of skeletonized mean diffusivity (PSMD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) in those participants who had an MRI brain performed at exam 9 ([ n = 896], as these measures were not included prior to exam 9), according to previously published methods . Imaging data were centrally processed and analyzed by operators blinded to all participant characteristics including cognitive performance on neuropsychological testing.…”

Elevated plasma cortisol associated with larger ventricles and smaller hippocampal volumes – a study in 2 independent elderly cohorts

“…Age and sex were known confounders affecting the HPA axis and the HP gonadal axis, with studies demonstrating an accentuated cortisol response in older women (Otte et al, 2005). We adjusted for total (Davis et al, 1986;Martignoni et al, 1990) and cognition (Echouffo-Tcheugui et al, 2018).…”

“…Neuroimaging studies have found elevated plasma cortisol levels to be associated with smaller hippocampi in AD (De Leon et al, 1988;Huang et al, 2009) and in cognitively healthy older adults (Lupien et al, 1998). Plasma cortisol levels have also been shown to be associated with smaller total cerebral brain volumes in healthy middle aged women, but not in men of middle-age (Echouffo-Tcheugui et al, 2018) or older ages (MacLullich et al, 2005). Additionally, evening but not morning, salivary cortisol levels were shown to be associated with smaller total brain, gray and white matter volumes in older adult participants without dementia (Geerlings et al, 2015).…”

Memory and standing balance after multisensory stimulation in a Snoezelen room in people with moderate learning disabilities

“…This is, however, a subjective analysis of the participants’ stress levels as it was not measured objectively. The Framingham Heart Study has highlighted that higher cortisol levels in the blood have been correlated with increased stress and anxiety which in turn caused reduced memory and visual perception in 2,200 healthy participants (Echouffo‐Tcheugui et al, ).…”