Anxiety as a Risk Factor for Cognitive Decline: A 12-Year Follow-Up Cohort Study
Open accessAbstract
Objective Anxiety might be a risk factor for cognitive decline, but previous studies had short follow-up or small sample sizes or studied general or single cognitive domain functioning.Methods Anxiety symptoms were assessed with the Symptom Checklist-90 in 918 participants of the Maastricht Aging Study aged 50 years or older. Anxiety was analyzed both dichotomously (highest versus lower quartiles as a group) and continuously. Neuropsychological tests measured executive function, memory, speed of information processing, and verbal fluency. Linear mixed models were conducted with anxiety symptoms as predictor and change in cognitive scores as outcome. Differences of associations by age and gender were studied with three-way interactions.Results Higher anxiety symptoms were significantly associated with more decline in verbal memory in those aged 65 years and older (delayed recall: χ 2 = 9.30, df = 2, p = 0.01; immediate recall: χ 2 = 11.81, df = 2, p = 0.003). There were sex differences in executive function (χ 2 = 6.63, df = 2, p = 0.036), fluency (χ 2 = 6.89, df = 2, p = 0.032), and processing speed (χ 2 = 8.83, df = 2, p = 0.012), with lower performance in women over time.Conclusion In participants without cognitive impairments at baseline, anxiety symptoms were associated with a decline in verbal memory in older adults and with poorer performance in nonamnestic domains in women. Adequate treatment of anxiety symptoms could have a beneficial influence on the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases. Further research is needed to elucidate whether this association is causal.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Neuropsychiatric symptoms may accelerate the course of neurodegenerative diseases and are potential modifying risk factors for cognitive decline.
“NPS may accelerate the course of neurodegenerative diseases and are potential modifying risk factors for cognitive decline [21–25].”
From Psychotherapeutic interventions in individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s dementia: a systematic review (2022) · cites this paper as [25]
The Abstract and Conclusion report that anxiety symptoms were associated with cognitive decline in specific groups and suggest that treating anxiety might affect the risk of developing neurodegenerative disease. The study concerns anxiety, not neuropsychiatric symptoms generally, and it does not show that those symptoms accelerate the course of an existing neurodegenerative disease. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 46 · Cited by 68
Research works printed but not linked: 4
- Beaudreau SA: O'Hara R: Late-life anxiety and cognitive impairment: a review. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 2008;16(10):790-803
- Mielke MM, Vemuri P, Rocca WA: Clinical epidemiology of Alz- heimer's disease: assessing sex and gender differences. Clin Epi- demiol 2014; 6:37-48
- Vink M, Jolles J: A new version of the Trail-Making Test as an information processing task. J Clin Neuropsychol 1985; 7:162
- Bunce D, Batterham PJ, Mackinnon AJ, et al: Depression, anxiety and cognition in community-dwelling adults aged 70 years and over. J Psychiatr Res 2012;46(12):1662-1666
- Authors
- Gulpers, B. J. A., Oude Voshaar, R. C., van Boxtel, M. P. J., Verhey, F. R. J., & Köhler, S.
- Affiliations
- Maastricht University Medical Centre (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Köhler, Sebastian
- Venue
- The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-01
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 42-52
- ISSN
- 1064-7481 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2890027380
- Cited by
- 68
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 5.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Universiteit Maastricht
- Maastricht Universitair Medisch Centrum
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine › Cancer-related cognitive impairment studies
- Keywords
- anxiety, cognitive decline, verbal memory, executive function, verbal fluency, processing speed, sex differences, older adults, aging, neurodegenerative diseases
- MeSH terms
- Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Anxiety, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Male, Memory Disorders, Middle Aged, Netherlands, Risk Factors, Executive Function, Cognitive Dysfunction
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
