Allostatic Load, a Measure of Cumulative Physiological Stress, Impairs Brain Structure but Not Amyloid Accumulation in Older Adults: An Exploratory Study
Allostatic load (AL) is a composite score of progressive physiological dysregulations in response to longterm exposure to everyday stress. Despite growing interest, limited research has focused on links with cerebral and cognitive aspects o
Allostatic load (AL) is a composite score of progressive physiological dysregulations in response to longterm exposure to everyday stress. Despite growing interest, limited research has focused on links with cerebral and cognitive aspects of aging and with markers sensitive to Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a healthy elderly population and with a multimodal approach. At baseline, 111 older adults (without cognitive impairment) from the Age-Well trial completed blood and anthropometric markers collection, cognitive assessments and multimodal neuroimaging within 3 months. AL was negatively associated with gray matter volume and white matter (WM) integrity within frontal and temporal regions and poorer attentional performance. AL is linked to structural brain integrity in aging-and stress-sensitive regions but not with AD-related markers (β-amyloid load) and only in two AD-sensitive brain regions in older adults.
These results highlight the potential interest of AL as a sensitive index of stress-induced brain aging.
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