Association Between Years of Education and Amyloid Burden in Patients With Subjective Cognitive Decline, MCI, and Alzheimer Disease
Merle C. Hoenig, Daniele Altomare, Camilla Caprioglio, Lyduine E. Collij, Frederik Barkhof, Bart van Berckel, Philip Scheltens, Gill Farrar, Mark Battle, Hendrik Theis, Kathrin Giehl, Gérard N. Bischof, Valentina Garibotto, José Luís Molinuevo, Oriol Grau‐Rivera, Julien Delrieu, Pierre Payoux, Jean‐François Démonet, Agneta Nordberg, Irina Savitcheva, Zuzana Walker, Paul Edison, Andrew Stephens, Rossella Gismondi, Frank Jessen, C. J. Buckley, Juan Domingo Gispert, Giovanni B. Frisoni, Alexander Drzezga
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Higher-educated patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) can harbor greater neuropathologic burden than those with less education despite similar symptom severity. In this study, we assessed whether this observation is also present in potential preclinical AD stages, namely in individuals with subjective cognitive decline and clinical features increasing AD likelihood (SCD+). METHODS: test. Education groups were defined using a median split on education (Md = 13 years) in a subsample of the initial cohort, for whom this information was available. RESULTS: = 0.024) using linear regression modeling. This interaction was driven by a negative association of education and CL values in the SCD+ group (ß = -0.11, 95% CI -4.85 to -0.21) and a positive association in the MCI group (ß = 0.15, 95% CI 0.79-5.22). No education-dependent differences in terms of WMH severity and comorbidities were found in the subsample (100 cases with SCD+, 97 cases with MCI, 72 cases with dementia). DISCUSSION: Education may represent a factor oppositely modulating subjective awareness in preclinical stages and objective severity of ongoing neuropathologic processes in clinical stages.