As we Cgonitive interested in the association between coynitive combined inflammation from Brain boosting techniques sources and cognitive decline, we pooled data from the 10 biomarkers and created a z -score representing the combined inflammation from these different sources. Article Navigation. Teng EL, Chui HC.

Inflammation and cognitive decline -

By combining measures of these established markers of inflammation, the team gave each person a composite inflammation score. Around 3 years after the start of the study, they also assessed each participant for another marker of inflammation: C-reactive protein.

These factors included education level and the presence of heart disease and high blood pressure. At the end of the study, the participants with the highest level of chronic inflammation at the start experienced an 8 percent steeper decline in cognitive ability compared with those who had the lowest inflammation levels.

Similarly, those who had the highest C-reactive protein levels saw a 12 percent steeper decline in mental ability.

Rather than these being worrying findings, the study authors hope that people will take them as a call to action. However, more work will be needed before we can conclude that inflammation causes cognitive decline.

Although the study used a large sample, there were some shortfalls. For instance, people with the highest levels of inflammation at the start of the study were more likely to drop out or pass away before the final tests, slightly skewing the data.

As the study authors note, they could have improved their study by assessing cognitive abilities more regularly and with more detailed tests. Also, it might be interesting to repeat a similar experiment and include more biomarkers of inflammation.

Currently, both cognitive decline and inflammation are hot topics in medical research, so more studies are sure to follow. Dementia describes symptoms affecting memory and cognitive function. Learn about both…. Dementia refers to symptoms that affect memory, communication, and thinking.

It features in Alzheimer's disease. Learn about symptoms, stages, and…. Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia. Symptoms include memory loss and cognitive decline. Learn more about it here. Short-term inflammation is essential for healing, but long-term inflammation is a factor in various diseases.

Learn more about inflammation here. Herbs that help reduce inflammation include turmeric and ginger. Green tea is also beneficial.

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Medical News Today. Health Conditions Health Products Discover Tools Connect. Inflammation in midlife hastens cognitive decline. By Tim Newman on February 15, — Fact checked by Jasmin Collier. Share on Pinterest Could influencing inflammation slow cognitive decline?

Inflammation and its consequences. Measuring decline. Thus, our data combined with previous studies, does not support the age-related enhancement in the association between systemic inflammation and cognitive impairment as an explanation for the observed moderated mediation.

Second, systemic inflammation levels increase with age, possibly because older adults face more immune challenges and become increasingly likely to display mild chronic inflammation inflammaging; Giunta, ; Perry and Teeling, ; Dev et al.

With chronic conditions, primed microglia can yield deleterious effects on their local neuro-environment, eliciting even greater inflammation, which may further prime microglia.

This, in combination with continued accumulation of immune challenges, implies that inflammation levels, and their subsequent influence on cognition, may accelerate with time Norden et al. Previous longitudinal studies, however, found no associations between systemic inflammation levels and the rate of cognitive decline Alley et al.

Importantly, these earlier studies focused on cohorts of older adults only. Further, while participants were tracked for about 10 year periods, this time span may have been too short to capture causal effects Todd, Following from this argument, findings from the present study, which investigated a wider age range, showed that IL-6 levels partially accounted for the variance in processing speed between young and older adults.

However, the cross-sectional nature of the present study does not allow causal conclusions of a mediation of inflammation on cognitive aging. Future longitudinal studies with longer data collection periods e.

While participants showed age-related cognitive impairments in both cognitive tasks, systemic inflammation only accounted for the age-related differences in processing speed but not short-term memory.

Heringa et al. Similarly, Tegeler et al. In line with this correlational evidence, a recent intervention study found that participants who received antioxidant supplementation e. Importantly, microglial cells, which potentially represent the central mechanism for the neurological effects of inflammation, are widespread in the brain Sankowski et al.

This means that cognitive processes that integrate various areas across the brain may be more immediately vulnerable to inflammaging. Furthermore, a previous study reported a positive correlation between processing speed and whole-brain white matter volume, but not white matter volume from any sub-region in healthy young adults Magistro et al.

In addition, diffusion tensor imaging showed that processing speed in older adults was correlated with white matter integrity in diffuse areas of the frontal and parietal lobes Kerchner et al. These results imply that processing speed is a cognitive process requiring coordination between various brain regions.

Therefore, evidence from the present and previous studies associating systemic inflammation and processing speed, but not short-term memory a more functionally localized process , supports the argument that systemic inflammation may cause global and diffuse brain damage with variable effects on individual cognitive domains.

We used the DSST to measure processing speed. Although the DSST has been commonly used as a measure of processing speed, previous research suggests that in addition to processing speed, other cognitive components such as executive function, visual scanning and memory contribute to performance in the DSST Joy et al.

Future studies could apply multiple cognitive tasks and adopt a latent factor approach to clarify the associations between systemic inflammation and various cognitive functions. In contrast, Charlton et al. Importantly, cytokine measures in individuals with late-life depression were compared with measures in relatively healthy older adults.

The study showed a significant correlation between inflammation biomarker levels and the severity of depressive symptoms. Thus, it is possible that psychological conditions, like depression, introduce additional inflammation in peripheral and central immune systems, enhancing the impact of inflammation on various neurological structures and functions.

As a result, more localized cognitive domains e. Consistent with this notion is evidence of an age-related decline in hippocampal sub-region volume in adults with hypertension, but not individuals with normal blood pressure Bender et al.

Further supporting this argument, previous studies suggest elevated systemic inflammation as a risk factor for cognitive impairment e. The present study was embedded in the context of a larger project, which only included Caucasian individuals to avoid potential confounds in some of the central project outcomes.

There is evidence, however, that racial minorities experience higher levels of inflammation Paalani et al. The present study directly tested the mediatory role of systemic inflammation on age-related differences in two cognitive domains i.

Our findings establish systemic inflammation as a potential mechanism underlying cognitive impairments in aging.

These results highlight the importance of reducing inflammation to promote cognitive health. Preventive measures, like regular erobic exercise and medications to reduce inflammation, adopted across the entire lifespan, may prove particularly important to protect against cognitive decline, especially among older adults.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Institutional Review Board at University of Florida.

The protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board at University of Florida. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

TL conceptualized the study, collected and analyzed the data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. GL conceptualized the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. EP and RR assisted in article editing. MF and YC-A revised the final manuscript draft.

NE conceptualized the study, supervised data collection and data analysis, and revised the manuscript. While working on this manuscript, NE was in part supported by the NIH-funded Claude D.

Pepper Older Americans Independence Center P30AG The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling Editor declared a shared affiliation, though no other collaboration, with the authors.

The authors are grateful to the research teams and study staff from the Social-Cognitive and Affective Development lab and the Institute on Aging at the University of Florida for assistance in study implementation, data collection and data management.

In addition, the authors wish to thank Brian Bouverat, Marvin Dirain and Jini Curry of the Metabolism and Translational Science Core at the Institute on Aging for technical assistance with the inflammation biomarker assays. Alley, D. Inflammation and rate of cognitive change in high-functioning older adults.

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Observational declime have implied associations between multiple an Inflammation and cognitive decline cecline Pre-game meal ideas for team sports, Intlammation drugs however did Lifestyle weight loss yield any protective effects on cognitive decline. We Inflammatuon to assess the associations of systemic inflammation, as measured by multiple cytokine and growth Xnd, with cognitive performance and brain atrophy using two-sample Mendelian randomization MR. Main results were computed by inverse-variance weighting; sensitivity analyses taking pleiotropy and invalid instruments into account were performed by using weighted-median estimator, MR-Egger, and MR PRESSO. Sensitivity analyses generally showed similar results, and no pleiotropic effect, heterogeneity, or possible reverse causation was detected. Our results suggested a possible causal association of high IL-8 levels with better cognitive performance but smaller hippocampal volume among the general healthy population, highlighting the complex role of inflammation in dementia-related phenotypes.