On 20 June, Dr Joshua Talbloom and collaborators published a paper in the eLife journal showing that individuals with a family history of AD performed less well in online learning tasks than peers with no AD family history.
Although it is well-established that people with a first-degree family history of AD are at higher risk of developing the disease, the influence of family history on cognition across the adult lifespan has not yet been fully characterised. The researchers also aimed to identify any lifestyle, medical or demographic factors that might affect cognition in persons with or without a family history of AD. To achieve this, the MindCrowd study recruited over 59,000 participants aged between 18-85, assessing cognition using an online learning and memory task called PAL (paired-associates learning). The PAL task was chosen as it is known to be affected early in the development of AD.
Statistical analysis of the study results showed that reduced performance in PAL tasks was evident in persons with a family history of AD (FH+) many decades before disease onset. This reduced PAL performance in FH+ participants was observed irrespective of gender, although female participants generally had higher PAL results compared to their male counterparts. Diabetes and educational attainment were also identified as modifiers for PAL performance in FH+ individuals, with diabetic participants and those with fewer years in education achieving lower PAL results overall.
