Education, incident cancer, and rate of memory decline in a national sample of US adults in mid-to-later-life

Middle-aged and older adults who develop cancer experience memory loss following diagnosis, but memory decline in the years before and after cancer diagnosis is slower compared to their cancer-free counterparts. Educational attainment strongly predicts memory function during aging, but it is unclear...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of geriatric oncology 2023-06, Vol.14 (5), p.101530-101530, Article 101530
Main Authors: Ospina-Romero, Monica, Brenowitz, Willa D., Glymour, M. Maria, Westrick, Ashly, Graff, Rebecca E., Hayes-Larson, Eleanor, Mayeda, Elizabeth Rose, Ackley, Sarah F., Kobayashi, Lindsay C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Aging
cancer
Cancer Survivors
Cognition
Educational Status
Epidemiology
Humans
Longitudinal Studies
Memory
Memory Disorders - epidemiology
Middle Aged
Neoplasms
Neoplasms - complications
Neoplasms - epidemiology
Survivors
Therapy
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Summary:Middle-aged and older adults who develop cancer experience memory loss following diagnosis, but memory decline in the years before and after cancer diagnosis is slower compared to their cancer-free counterparts. Educational attainment strongly predicts memory function during aging, but it is unclear whether education protects against memory loss related to cancer incidence or modifies long-term memory trajectories in middle-aged and older cancer survivors. Data were from 14,449 adults (3,248 with incident cancer, excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) aged 50+ in the population-based US Health and Retirement Study from 1998 to 2016. Memory was assessed every two years as a composite of immediate and delayed word recall tests and proxy assessments for impaired individuals. Memory scores all time points were standardized at to the baseline distribution. Using multivariate-adjusted linear mixed-effects models, we estimated rates of memory decline in the years before cancer diagnosis, shortly after diagnosis, and in the years after diagnosis. We compared rates of memory decline between incident cancer cases and age-matched cancer-free adults, overall and according to level of education (
ISSN:1879-4068
1879-4076
DOI:10.1016/j.jgo.2023.101530