Cancer diagnoses are associated with better long-term memory in older adults, possibly reflecting a range of social confounders that increase cancer risk but improve memory. We used spouse's memory as a negative control outcome to evaluate this possible confounding, since spouses share social characteristics and environments, and individuals' cancers are unlikely to cause better memory among their spouses. We estimated the association of an individual's incident cancer diagnosis (exposure) with their own (primary outcome) and their spouse's (negative control outcome) memory decline in 3601 couples from 1998 to 2014 in the Health and Retirement Study, using linear mixed-effects models. Incident cancer predicted better long-term memory for the diagnosed individual. We observed no association between an individual's cancer diagnosis and rate of spousal memory decline. This negative control study suggests that the inverse association between incident cancer and rate of memory decline is unlikely to be attributable to social/behavioral factors shared between spouses.

中文翻译：

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癌症与配偶记忆衰退率之间的关联：一项评估癌症与记忆关系的（未测量的）社会混杂因素的阴性对照研究。

癌症诊断与老年人更好的长期记忆有关，这可能反映了一系列增加癌症风险但改善记忆力的社会混杂因素。我们使用配偶的记忆作为阴性对照结果来评估这种可能的混杂因素，因为配偶具有共同的社会特征和环境，并且个人的癌症不太可能导致配偶的记忆更好。我们使用线性混合效应模型，估计了 1998 年至 2014 年健康与退休研究中 3601 对夫妇的癌症诊断（暴露）与其自身（主要结果）和配偶（阴性对照结果）记忆力下降之间的关联。癌症的发生预示着被诊断的个体有更好的长期记忆力。我们观察到个体的癌症诊断与配偶记忆衰退率之间没有关联。这项阴性对照研究表明，癌症发生率与记忆力下降率之间的负相关不太可能归因于配偶之间共有的社会/行为因素。