Subjective cognitive complaints in White and African American older adults: associations with demographic, mood, cognitive, and neuroimaging features

ABSTRACT

Subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) in cognitively intact older adults have been investigated as a clinically important symptom that may portend the onset of a neurodegenerative disorder such as Alzheimer’s disease. Few studies have concurrently incorporated demographic features, depressive symptoms, neuropsychological status, and neuroimaging correlates of SCC and evaluated whether these differ in White and African American older adults. In the current study, 131 (77 White, 54 African American) healthy participants ≥50 years old completed the Cognitive Function Instrument (CFI) to assess SCC, and they underwent objective cognitive testing, assessment of mood, and brain magnetic resonance imaging. Pearson Product Moment correlations were performed to evaluate associations of the CFI self-ratings with the above measures for the combined group and separately for White and African American participants. SCC were associated with greater depressive symptoms in both White and African American participants in adjusted models controlling for overall cognitive status, education, and hypertension. Greater white matter hyperintensities, lower cortical thickness, older age, and slower set shifting speed were associated with increased SCC in White participants. Although the correlations were not significant for African Americans, the strength of the associations were comparable to White participants. Hippocampal volume was not associated with either total SCC or items specific to memory functioning in the entire group. Longitudinal studies are needed to further evaluate the clinical significance of these associations with risk of conversion to mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

KEYWORDS:

• Subjective cognitive complaints
• subjective memory complaints
• older adults
• race
• cognitive function instrument

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all study participants for their participation, the Brain, Stress, Hypertension and Aging Research Program and the Emory Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the Emory Center for Systems Imaging staff.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by grants [K24 AG062786, AG049752, and RF1AG051633] from the National Institutes of Health (Ihab Hajjar, MD, MS)