APOE EFFECTS ON COGNITION FROM MIDDLE CHILDHOOD TO THE CUSP OF MIDDLE ADULTHOOD

• Published in: Innovation in aging Vol. 1; no. suppl_1; p. 475
• Main Authors: Reynolds, C.A., Smolen, A., Haberstick, B.C., DeFries, J.C., Wadsworth, S.J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: US Oxford University Press 01.07.2017
• Subjects: Abstracts
• ISSN: 2399-5300; 2399-5300
• DOI: 10.1093/geroni/igx004.1690

APOE is a well-established genetic risk factor for cognitive aging and dementia, but its influence on cognition in childhood through early adulthood is inconclusive. We examine cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships of APOE on cognitive performance in individuals now approaching midlife (30–45 years) from the ongoing Colorado Adoption/Twin Study of Lifespan behavioral development and cognitive aging study (CATSLife), with over 30 years of follow-up from parent studies (Colorado Adoption Project, Longitudinal Twin Study). We conducted an analysis on a subset of participants who participated in cognitive assessments between middle childhood and early adulthood with available APOE genotyping. Cross-sectional analyses of WAIS subtests in adolescence ( M age  = 16.42, SD age  = .73; N = 401) accounting for sibling clustering, sex and age suggested that APOE e4 carriers perform significantly more poorly at age 16 on the WAIS Vocabulary, Digit Span, Picture Completion and Object assembly subtests ( p < .05; d ’s .27 - .34). Longitudinal growth analyses of specific memory, spatial and speed abilities between middle childhood and early adulthood (7 – 35 years; N = 436) suggested that APOE e4 alleles were associated with poorer memory performance on a paired associates task (Names and Faces delayed, p < .05), and with dampened nonlinear gains on a spatial rotations task across age (ETS Card Rotations, p < .02). These findings suggest that APOE is associated with differential cognitive performance earlier than midlife, particularly for memory and spatial abilities. We will extend analyses to the entire CATSLife sample (N=1600) and compare results to the international context.