Education level correlated with functional decline in Black adults with high tau levels
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Key takeaways:
- Among 410 Black adult participants, 74 were found to have high levels of pTau181.
- The results highlight the potential of education as a modifiable risk factor in Alzheimer’s.
Higher education levels may protect against cognitive and functional difficulties for Black individuals with high levels of tau, indicating Alzheimer’s pathology, according to research from the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
“Our study showed how education protects against functional difficulties and looked at its impact when the APOE genetic risk factor is present, providing new information for potential strategies to help those at risk,” Farid Rajabli, PhD, leady study author and research assistant professor in the department of human genetics at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, told Healio in an email.
Previous research has determined that cognitive and functional abilities in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease pathology (ADP) are highly variable and that education is associated with level of functional impairment. Rajabli and colleagues aimed to investigate the correlations between level of education and functional impairments in Black individuals with ADP.
Their study included 410 (mean age 71.08 years; 73.9% female) Black adults found through genetics studies at Wake Forest University and the University of Miami, all of whom had self-reported their years of education, logged Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scores as well as APOE genotypes and pTau181 blood-based biomarkers for AD measured by Simoa technology from Quanterix. Further analysis revealed 74 participants having high levels of p-Tau181, with 43 individuals carrying the APOE ɛ4 gene and 31 without.
Utilizing higher educational attainment (EA) as a measure of cognitive reserve, CDR-FUNC as a functional difficulties measure and blood pTau181, Rajabli and colleagues employed the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test to assess the relationship between EA and the Clinical Dementia Rating scale for functional difficulties (CDR-FUNC) in those 74 individuals found to have advanced pTau181 levels.
According to results, a correlation was found between EA and functional difficulties in Black individuals with high levels of pTau181. Those with high EA were more likely to possess better functional ability compared with those with lower EA (W = 730.5; P = 0.0007). In addition, data showed the effect of high EA on functional resilience was stronger in 4 non-carriers compared with 4 carriers (W= 555.5; P = 0.022).
“The clinical relevance of our findings lies in showing that education is a modifiable risk factor that can provide protection against Alzheimer disease-related cognitive and functional symptoms, even for those with the APOE genetic risk,” Rajabli told Healio. “This highlights the potential of educational strategies and cognitive engagement in managing Alzheimer risk.”