Abstract

Objectives

Fatigue has been suggested as a marker of biological aging. It seems plausible that this symptom might be associated with changes in brain health. The objective of this study was to examine the associations between persistent fatigue and neuroimaging correlates in a non-disease-specific population of community-dwelling older adults.

Methods

We performed a cross-sectional analysis using data from The Multidomain Alzheimer Preventive Trial (MAPT). We included 458 subjects. Persistent fatigue was defined as meeting exhaustion criterion of Fried frailty phenotype in two consecutive clinical visits six months apart between study baseline and one year. Brain imaging correlates, assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), were the outcomes. The associations between persistent fatigue and brain correlates were explored using mixed model linear regressions with random effect at the center level.

Results

The mean age of the participants was 74.8 ± 4 years old, and 63% of the subjects were women. Forty-seven participants (10%) exhibited a persistent fatigue profile. People with persistent fatigue were older compared to subjects without persistent fatigue (76.2 years ± 4.3 vs.74.7 ± 3.9 p = 0.009). Persistent fatigue was associated with higher white matter hyperintensity volume in the fully adjusted analysis. We did not find any cross-sectional association between persistent fatigue and sub-cortical volumes and global and regional cortical thickness.

Conclusion

Persistent fatigue was cross-sectionnally associated with higher white matter hyperintensity volume in older adults. Further longitudinal studies, using an assessment tool specifically designed and validated for measuring fatigue, are needed to confirm our findings.

中文翻译：

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老年人持续疲劳的神经影像学相关性：多域阿尔茨海默病预防试验 (MAPT) 试验的二次分析

摘要

目标

疲劳被认为是生物衰老的标志。这种症状可能与大脑健康的变化有关，这似乎是合理的。本研究的目的是在社区居住的老年人的非疾病特异性人群中检查持续性疲劳与神经影像学相关性之间的关联。

方法

我们使用来自多领域阿尔茨海默病预防试验 (MAPT) 的数据进行了横断面分析。我们纳入了 458 名受试者。持续疲劳被定义为在研究​​基线和一年之间相隔六个月的两次连续临床访问中满足 Fried 虚弱表型的疲惫标准。通过磁共振成像 (MRI) 评估的脑成像相关性是结果。使用在中心级别具有随机效应的混合模型线性回归探索了持续性疲劳与大脑相关性之间的关联。

结果

参与者的平均年龄为 74.8 ± 4 岁，63% 的受试者为女性。47 名参与者 (10%) 表现出持续的疲劳特征。与没有持续疲劳的受试者相比，有持续疲劳的人年龄更大（76.2 岁 ± 4.3 vs.74.7 ± 3.9 p  = 0.009）。在完全调整的分析中，持续性疲劳与较高的白质高信号量相关。我们没有发现持续疲劳和皮层下体积与全球和区域皮层厚度之间存在任何横截面关联。

结论

持续疲劳与老年人较高的白质高信号体积相关。需要使用专门设计和验证用于测量疲劳的评估工具进行进一步的纵向研究，以确认我们的发现。