Whole-body aging mediates the association between socioeconomic status disparities and cognition and verbal fluency among U.S. older adults

BackgroundCognitive decline is a worldwide public health issue among older populations. Socioeconomic status disparities in income, education, and social status are linked to cognitive function and verbal fluency. Although the etiology of cognitive decline remains unclear, social and biological factors are increasingly recognized as significant risk contributors. This study aims to investigate the potential associations between socioeconomic status and cognitive functions and the mediated effect of whole-body aging. MethodsData on socioeconomic status, whole-bodying aging, cognitive functions, and verbal fluency were collected from 2321 participants aged over 60 years based on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011-2014. Independent t-tests, one-way ANOVA tests, Spearman correlation, and multiple logistic regression were used to explore the associations of socioeconomic status, whole-body aging, and cognitive functions, respectively. Mediation analyses were used to explore the mediated effects of whole-body aging on the associations between socioeconomic status and cognitive functions. ResultsIn the multiple regression analysis models, socioeconomic status and whole-body aging were associated with cognitive function and verbal fluency (all p <0.05). Mediation analyses indicated that the associations between socioeconomic status and cognitive function were parallelly mediated by whole-body aging, with the proportion of mediation ranging from 3.21% to 7.65% (all p{square}<{square}0.05). ConclusionThese findings suggested that socioeconomic status disparities increased the impairment of immediate and delayed learning ability, sustained attention, processing speed, working memory, and verbal fluency, which was possibly and partially mediated by whole-body aging. Graphic Abstract O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=146 SRC="FIGDIR/small/25329679v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (22K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@18d0a23org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@949c53org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@a31398org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@5b99ed_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG