A recent research article in Nature Communications has highlighted the effects of the multidimensional social exposome on dementia risk and brain health over the lifespan, in a cohort of 2211 people from underserved regions in six Latin American countries. The social exposome can be understood as the total sum of all environmental and lifestyle exposures an individual experiences from conception to death. In this study the authors calculated a social exposome score that was based on the combined lifespan measures of education, food insecurity, financial status, assets, access to healthcare, childhood labour, subjective socioeconomic status, childhood experiences, traumatic events, and relationship assessments. They then used advanced statistical techniques to explore the impacts of the combined score and different combinations of the score sub-components, to explore their impact within the cohort which included healthy controls, people with Alzheimer’s disease and people with frontotemporal lobar degeneration.
The analyses revealed that an adverse exposome score was associate with poorer cognition in healthy controls. In those with dementia and frontotemporal lobar degeneration, adverse or more complex exposome scores were associated with lower brain and physical functioning. The authors’ exploration of various combinations of the exposome score suggested that in this cohort of people from Latin America, food insecurity, financial resources, subjective socioeconomic status, and access to healthcare were key correlates or predictors of outcome. However, if these factors were collectively present, they more heavily influenced clinical and cognitive outcomes. The authors performed sensitivity analysis with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans obtained from a subset of the cohort; confirming the statistical correlations with physical MRI data (brain connectivity data). The authors conclude that greater understanding of the individual and cumulative effects of the exposome can help researchers and clinicians develop more personalised or tailored prevention and management strategies, particularly in developing countries where risk profiles may be different from those identified by current literature.
More information on this study is available here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40935836/
