Pesticide Exposure and Age-Related Changes in Cognitive Function

农药接触与年龄相关的认知功能变化

• 批准号: 8330785
• 负责人: Thomas A. Arcury
• 金额: $ 18.5万
• 依托单位: WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-09 至 2015-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8330785
• 关键词: Acids; Activities of Daily Living; Acute; Address; Adult; Affect; Age; Aging; Agriculture; Benchmarking; Caregivers; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.); Chronic; Cognition; Cognitive; Cognitive deficits; Communities; Complex; Control Groups; Data; Dementia; Deterioration; Development; Dicarboxylic Acids; Disease; Elderly; Employment; Exposure to; Family; Fostering; Foundations; Future; Goals; Health; Healthcare Systems; Human; Immigrant; Impaired cognition; Impairment; Individual; Injury; Latino; Learning; Life; Longitudinal Studies; Malathion; Malnutrition; Measures; Memory; Memory impairment; Motor; Nervous system structure; North Carolina; Occupations; Outcome; Parkinson Disease; Participant; Performance; Pesticides; Population; Psyche structure; Psychomotor Performance; Quality Control; Quality of life; Reaction Time; Relative (related person); Research; Risk; Sample Size; Seasons; Semantic memory; Short-Term Memory; Societies; Staging; Toxicant exposure; Visuospatial; Work; age related; cognitive change; cognitive function; farm worker; flexibility; follow-up; normal aging; pesticide exposure; pre-clinical; processing speed; progressive neurodegeneration; pyrethroid; skills; urinary

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In adult farm workers, pesticide exposure is associated with cognitive deficits. Whether exposure to pesticide causes impairments and declines in specific cognitive domains beyond what would be expected due to normal aging alone is not known. Normal aging is associated with declines in various complex cognitive abilities, including declines in processing speed, working memory, mental flexibility, and spatial learning, while some aspects of cognition, such as those involving verbal skills, implicit learning, and semantic memory, generally remain largely spared. Poor complex cognitive abilities are associated with greater limitations in activities of daily living, problems accessing health care systems, vulnerability to disease, injury, malnutrition, and subsequently a loss of ability to function independently in the community. That loss of independence impairs the quality of life for both the affected individuals and their caregivers, and constitutes a major financial burden to affected families and society. Previous studies suggest that exposure to pesticide is associated with the risk for cognitive impairment, but no study has examined whether low-level chronic exposure to pesticide exacerbates age-related impairments in cognitive function. Distinguishing cognitive decrements associated with pesticide exposure from normal aging could prove to be a sensitive measure of the effects of low-level chronic exposure to pesticide. We propose an exploratory project to document the effects of pesticides on cognitive function in older adults. This study will enable us to address the following aims. The primary aims are (1) to identify the domains of cognitive function that are affected by pesticide exposure; and (2) to determine whether older farm workers are more vulnerable to the effects of pesticide exposure and have significantly poorer cognitive scores than younger farm workers. A secondary aim focuses on exploring the relative contributions of normal aging and pesticide exposure to change in cognitive function at 1-year follow-up. Our goals are to provide an early understanding of the interaction of aging and pesticide exposure on cognitive function, and to achieve exploratory longitudinal study benchmarks, including quality control, recruitment, retention, measures refinement, and sample size estimates. The information will provide the foundation for future definitive studies directed towards identifying and characterizing cognitive domains that are affected and temporal decline in cognitive function as related to pesticide exposure.

描述（由申请人提供）：在成年农场工人中，农药暴露与认知缺陷有关。尚不清楚对农药的暴露是否会导致特定认知领域的损害和下降。正常衰老与各种复杂的认知能力的下降有关，包括处理速度，工作记忆，心理灵活性和空间学习的下降，而认知的某些方面，例如涉及言语技能，隐性学习和语义记忆的认知方面，通常仍然在很大程度上被保留。不良的复杂认知能力与日常生活活动，疾病脆弱性，伤害，营养不良的脆弱性以及随后在社区中独立起作用的能力丧失有关。失去独立性会损害受影响个人及其照顾者的生活质量，并构成了受影响家庭和社会的重大财务负担。先前的研究表明，暴露于农药与认知障碍的风险有关，但是尚无研究检查中低级长期暴露于农药是否加剧了认知功能中与年龄相关的障碍。区分与正常衰老有关的认知减少可能是对低级长期暴露于农药的影响的敏感度量。我们提出了一个探索性项目，以记录农药对老年人认知功能的影响。这项研究将使我们能够解决以下目标。主要目的是（1）确定受农药暴露影响的认知功能领域； （2）确定年长的农场工人是否比年轻的农场工人更容易受到农药暴露的影响，并且认知得分明显较差。次要目的侧重于探索正常衰老和农药暴露于1年随访中认知功能变化的相对贡献。我们的目标是尽早了解衰老和农药暴露在认知功能上的相互作用，并实现探索性纵向研究基准，包括质量控制，招募，保留率，衡量措施和样本量估计。该信息将为未来的确定性研究提供基础，该研究旨在识别和表征受影响的认知领域和与农药暴露有关的认知功能下降的基础。