Hippocampal atrophy in the healthy is initially linear and independent of age

Cohen, Robert M.; Szczepanik, Joanna; McManus, Michael; Mirza, Nadeem; Putnam, Karen; Levy, Jim; Sunderland, Trey

doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2005.07.018

« Previous Next »Neurobiology of Aging
Volume 27, Issue 10 , Pages 1385-1394, October 2006

Hippocampal atrophy in the healthy is initially linear and independent of age

Geriatric Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Clinical Research Center 2-5362, MSC 1274, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda MD 20892-1274, USA

Received 4 March 2005; received in revised form 11 July 2005; accepted 21 July 2005. published online 19 September 2005.

Abstract

Patients with minimal cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer's disease (AD) have smaller hippocampal volumes (HV) and increased rates of HV loss (rHVL). A 6-year study was conducted to assess rHVL in healthy aging subjects (HC) in which four MRI scans, each 2 years apart, were obtained on 26 HC with a mean age of 58.8 years when entering the study. rHVLs were linear and significantly differed among subjects, even those sharing an identical apoliporotein E genotype, ranging from .027 to .191cc/year (S.D.=.022cc/year), and were not affected by age or sex. rHVL, but not HV, at time of subject entry, was found to predict performance on the delayed recall measure of the Selective Reminder Task obtained 6 years after subject entry into study. Although the molecular events underlying rHVL are unclear, the significance of rHVL in subjects in their sixth and seventh decades of life for predicting age-related cognitive trajectories and whether changes in rHVLs foreshadow the development of MCI are the subject of ongoing study.