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Sex-specific nonlinear associations between serum lipids and different domains of cognitive function in middle to older age individuals

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Abstract

To examine how serum lipids relates to specific cognitive ability domains between the men and women in Chinese middle to older age individuals. A complete lipid panel was obtained from 1444 individuals, ages 50–65, who also underwent a selection of cognitive tests. Participants were 584 men and 860 women from Linyi city, Shandong province. Multiple linear regression analyses examined serum lipids level as quadratic predictors of sex-specific measure of performance in different cognitive domains, which were adjusted for sociodemographic and lifestyle characteristics. In men, a significant quadratic effect of total cholesterol (TC) was identified for Digit Symbol (B = −0.081, P = 0.044) and also quadratic effect of low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) was identified for Trail Making Test B (B = −0.082, P = 0.045). Differently in women, there were significant quadratic associations between high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) and multiple neuropsychological tests. The nonlinear lipid-cognition associations differed between men and women and were specific to certain cognitive domains and might be of potential relevance for prevention and therapy of cognitive decline.

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Correspondence to Rong Xiao.

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The research was supported by the State Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81330065).

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The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

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Lu, Y., An, Y., Yu, H. et al. Sex-specific nonlinear associations between serum lipids and different domains of cognitive function in middle to older age individuals. Metab Brain Dis 32, 1089–1097 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11011-017-9999-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11011-017-9999-y

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