# Metabolic and Inflammatory Pathways of Midlife Neurocognitive Disparities

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · 2021 · $622,772

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Health is not randomly distributed across people or across space: it tracks a socioeconomic
gradient that extends from individuals to the areas in which they live. Individual- and area-level
attributes of socioeconomic disadvantage confer risk for a broad range of interrelated physical
and neurocognitive health outcomes. This risk is especially apparent in midlife when
pathophysiological trajectories of neurocognitive aging that predict risk for dementia in later life
begin to accelerate. In this regard, we have provided some of the first evidence that individual-
and area- level socioeconomic disadvantage associate with reduced cortical tissue volume and
white matter integrity, aspects of brain morphology that show normative shrinkage and integrity
loss with age in association with poorer cognitive outcomes. Pathways linking socioeconomic
disadvantage to accelerated neurocognitive aging remain unclear. Recent evidence, including
our own, suggests that metabolic factors may play a role. Individuals who develop metabolic
syndrome, pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes mellitus are at increased risk for accelerated
neurocognitive aging. Furthermore, our recent cross-sectional findings suggest that metabolic
risk factors contribute to the associations of area-level disadvantage with brain morphology
among midlife adults. Here, we aim to extend this work by longitudinally examining metabolic
pathways linking individual- and area-level disadvantage to neurocognitive aging across a 10
year period of midlife. For this purpose, we propose reassessing a sample of 300 cognitively
normal midlife adults on whom we collected baseline measures of socioeconomic parameters,
metabolic risk, brain morphology and cognitive function 9-10 years ago (mean age at follow-up
= 52). Our primary aims examine whether individual- and area-level measures of socioeconomic
disadvantage predict changes in brain morphology and cognitive function that decline with age
and whether associations of disadvantage with neurocognitive aging are explained by metabolic
risk and associated inflammation. We anticipate that this study will contribute to new
knowledge to the neurobiology of disparities in cognitive aging.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10200027
- **Project number:** 5R01DK110041-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
- **Principal Investigator:** Peter J Gianaros
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $622,772
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-07-20 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10200027

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10200027, Metabolic and Inflammatory Pathways of Midlife Neurocognitive Disparities (5R01DK110041-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10200027. Licensed CC0.

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