Postmortem Brain MRI Is Related to Cognitive Decline, Independent of Cerebral Vessel Disease in Older Adults

I sure as hell hope that my doctors can figure out any cognitive decline reasons and correct them  before I'm autopsied.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019745801830188X

• Robert J. Dawe, PhD^{1, 2, ,} ,
• Lei Yu, PhD^{1, 3},
• Julie A. Schneider, MS, MD^{1, 3, 4},
• Konstantinos Arfanakis, PhD^{1, 2, 5},
• David A. Bennett, MD^{1, 3},
• Patricia A. Boyle, PhD^{1, 6}

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2018.05.020

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Highlights

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Postmortem MRI transverse relaxation (R₂) is associated with the linear rate of global cognitive decline in late life and accounts for more than 5% of its variance.

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The association of R₂ with cognitive decline persists after accounting for indices of cerebral vessel disease, namely atherosclerosis, arteriolosclerosis, and cerebral amyloid angiopathy.

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R₂ is also associated with specific components of a nonlinear model of cognitive decline.

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R₂ reflects a dimension of brain tissue integrity not captured by current histopathologic indices and therefore may highlight important targets for future interventions against late life cognitive decline.

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ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine whether metrics of brain tissue integrity derived from postmortem MRI are associated with late life cognitive decline, independent of cerebral vessel disease. Using data from 554 older adults, we employed voxelwise regression to identify regions where the postmortem MRI transverse relaxation rate constant R₂ was associated with the rate of decline in global cognition. We then used linear mixed models to investigate the association between a composite R₂ measure and cognitive decline, controlling for neuropathology including three indices of vessel disease: atherosclerosis, arteriolosclerosis, and cerebral amyloid angiopathy. This composite R₂ measure was associated with the rate of decline (0.049 unit annually per R₂ unit, p<0.0001) and accounted for 6.1% of its variance, beyond contributions from vessel disease indices and other prominent age-related neuropathologies. Thus, postmortem brain R₂ reflects disease processes underlying cognitive decline that are not captured by vessel disease indices or other standard neuropathologic indices and may provide a measure of brain tissue integrity that is complementary to histopathologic evaluation.

Keywords

• Transverse relaxation;
• R₂;
• voxelwise;
• atherosclerosis;
• arteriolosclerosis;
• cerebral amyloid angiopathy

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