ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Aging Neurosci.

Sec. Neurocognitive Aging and Behavior

Volume 17 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2025.1471154

This article is part of the Research TopicProgress in the Assessment and Intervention of Neurocognitive Aging and Neurodegenerative DiseasesView all 17 articles

Modeling heterogeneity in cognitive trajectories in the Framingham Heart Study

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Binghamton University, Binghamton, United States
  • 2Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • 3Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and CTE Center, Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, United States
  • 4Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • 5Framingham Heart Study, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, Framingham, United States
  • 6Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases, Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, United States
  • 7Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • 8Department of Neurology, Boston Medical Center, Boston, United States
  • 9Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • 10Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • 11Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Larner College of Medicine, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, United States
  • 12Department of Medicine, Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, United States
  • 13Section of General Internal Medicine, Boston Medical Center, Boston, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The prevalence of cognitive impairment in the population is growing; however, there is substantial heterogeneity in the rate of decline across different cognitive domains. Harmonized factor scores measuring memory, executive function, and language domains have been created in the Framingham Heart Study (FHS). This work identified FHS participants with two or more repeated factor scores after age 60 and fitted latent class mixed models (LCMM) to cluster cognitive trajectories within each domain. Non-linear shapes of trajectories were modeled piecewise linearly, followed by stepwise selections to select cluster-specific change points. We identified different latent classes of participants with early cognitive decline, compared to late decliners, for each domain. Ten-fold cross-validation yielded stable subgroupings. Our findings show latent-class-related differential patterns in cognitive aging in the FHS. We also investigated the association between identified latent classes with existing protein biomarkers of cognitive aging in a subsample of the study and found elevated levels of CD40L and CD14 were associated with a higher risk of early decline in memory and executive function domain, respectively. In summary, our study advances the understanding of cognitive decline heterogeneity among FHS participants and sets the stage for further investigations into early intervention strategies and personalized approaches to mitigate cognitive aging risks.

Keywords: cognitive decline, cognitive trajectories, Framingham Heart Study (FHS), Latent Class Mixed Models (LCMM), clustering

Received: 26 Jul 2024; Accepted: 30 May 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Fang, Chen, Mez, Satizabal, Alosco, Qiu, Doyle, Murabito and Lunetta. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Yuan Fang, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Binghamton University, Binghamton, United States

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.