Olfactory identification impairment might indicate future cognitive decline in elderly individuals. An unresolved question is to what extent this effect is dependent on the ApoE-ε4, a genotype associated with risk of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Given the current concern about reproducibility in empirical research, we assessed this issue in a large sample (n = 1637) of older adults (60 - 96 years) from the population-based longitudinal Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K). A hierarchical regression analysis was carried out to determine if a low score on an odor identification test, and the presence of ApoE-ε4, would predict the magnitude of a prospective 6-year change in the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) after controlling for demographic, health-related, and cognitive variables. We found that overall, lower odor identification performance was predictive of cognitive decline, and, as hypothesized, we found that the effect was most pronounced among ApoE-ε4 carriers. Our results from this high-powered sample suggest that in elderly carriers of the ApoE-ε4 allele, odor identification impairment provides an indication of future cognitive decline, which has relevance for the prognosis of AD.

中文翻译：

---

气味识别缺陷和APOE4之间的相互作用预测了老年人的6年认知能力下降。

嗅觉识别障碍可能表明未来老年人的认知能力下降。一个尚未解决的问题是这种作用在多大程度上取决于ApoE-ε4，ApoE-ε4是与阿尔茨海默氏病（AD）风险相关的基因型。考虑到当前对经验研究的可重复性的关注，我们从基于人口的纵向瑞典国家人口老龄化和护理研究（SNAC-）中对大量老年人（60-96岁）（n = 1637）进行了评估。 K）。进行了层次回归分析，以确定气味识别测试的低分以及ApoE-ε4的存在是否可以预测控制后的6年期迷你精神状态检查（MMSE）的幅度人口，健康相关和认知变量。我们发现总体而言，较低的气味识别性能可预测认知能力下降，并且，如所假设的那样，我们发现该影响在ApoE-ε4携带者中最为明显。我们从该高能样本获得的结果表明，在ApoE-ε4等位基因的老年携带者中，气味识别障碍提供了未来认知能力下降的指示，这与AD的预后有关。