The influence of social support on cognitive health in older women: a Women’s Health Initiative study

ABSTRACT

Social support is associated prospectively with cognitive decline and dementia among the elderly; however, little is known about the impact of social support on healthy neurological aging. The current study investigates whether perceived social support has an influence on neurological health among a large sample of healthy postmenopausal women. Social support and neuropsychological outcomes were measured annually for six years through the Women’s Health Initiative Study of Cognitive Aging. In postmenopausal women, higher perceived social support was associated with significantly better overall neuropsychological functioning at baseline, especially in the domains of short-delay figural memory, short-delay verbal memory, and semantic fluency. No significant associations were found between social support and longitudinal changes in neuropsychological function over a median follow-up period of six years. Additionally, there was no significant relationship between social support and regional brain volumes. These findings suggest that social support is related to performance in a subset of neuropsychological domains and contributes to the existing literature that points to the importance of social support as a modifiable lifestyle factor that has the potential to help protect against the decline of cognitive aging, specifically among older adult women.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognition
• perceived social support
• neuropsychology
• aging
• cognitive health

Acknowledgments

The WHI program is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through contracts HHSN268201600018C, HHSN268201600001C, HHSN268201600002C, HHSN268201600003C, and HHSN268201600004C.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data is available through the WHI online resource, https://www.whi.org/researchers/data/Pages/Home.aspx while the WHI remains funded (currently through 2020) and indefinitely through BioLINCC https://biolincc.nhlbi.nih.gov/studies/whi_ctos/. Eligible researchers (See https://www.whi.org/researchers/data/Pages/Home.aspx for eligibility) may download the data directly at the WHI online resource. Other researchers may download the publicly available data through BioLINCC, in accordance with NHLBI’s BioLINCC guidelines (https://biolincc.nhlbi.nih.gov/media/guidelines/handbook.pdf?link_time=2019-03-07_12:38:37.619479).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.