With stratification by APOE allele status, we examined the effect of plasma apoE/lipids on longitudinal change in the cognitive function of community-dwelling

elderly using the data from a 3-year follow-up study. Three-year follow-up examinations of the effect of plasma apoE/lipids on cognitive function in the elderly Participants were recruited in the present study from the “Tone Project” in Tone town, Ibaraki, Japan.10 A total of 1395 volunteers Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical participated in the first baseline study between December 2001 and April 2002. Three years later, 622 of them who had no history of stroke during follow-up were able to be Daporinad price evaluated again between December Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical 2004 and April 2005, and we used the results from those subjects tested twice. At the initial examination, all of the eligible subjects provided written informed consent for

their participation in the study. This study was approved by the ethics committee of Tsukuba University. All participants underwent the same cognitive assessment at the baseline and 3-year examinations using a set of four tests to measure the following cognitive domains: attention, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical memory, language, and reasoning. We evaluated attention by using the Japanese version of a Set-dependent activity,11 memory ability using the Category Cued Recall test,12 and language ability with a category fluency test.13 Abstract reasoning ability was evaluated with the Similarities subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R).14 The assessment procedures have been described elsewhere.8,9 A composite cognitive score was computed from the four scores using the first component of the scores of principal component Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical analysis. Blood samples were Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical collected from the subjects at fasting visits at the initial examination. Plasma levels of lowdensity lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), triglycerides (TG), and total cholesterol (TC) were measured using standard enzymatic methods on routine automated chemistry systems. Plasma

apoE levels were determined by turbidimetric immunoassay. Genomic DNA was used for APOE typing. Subjects were divided into two APOE groups by E4 status with E4-(n=509) (genotypes ε2/ε3 [n=52], ε3/ε3 [n=457]) and E4+ (n=113) (genotypes [ε2/ε4 second n=6], ε3/ε4 [n=99] and ε4/ε4 [n=8]) to test for the influence of genotype on the association between lipids and cognitive function. The subjects in each category were divided into three strata according to the plasma concentrations of lipids. To examine the influence of plasma lipids on cognitive function, composite cognitive scores of the three strata of plasma concentrations were compared in E4- and E4+ groups separately by ANCOVA, with age, sex, years of education, Geriatric Depression Scale score, cigarette smoking, and medical history of diseases as covariates.