Abstract

Alzheimer’s Disease is a complex, multifactorial, and comorbid condition. The asymptomatic behavior in the early stages makes the identification of the disease onset particularly challenging. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is an intermediary stage between the expected decline of normal aging and the pathological decline associated with dementia. The identification of risk factors for MCI is thus sorely needed. Self-reported personal information such as age, education, income level, sleep, diet, physical exercise, etc. is called to play a key role not only in the early identification of MCI but also in the design of personalized interventions and the promotion of patients empowerment. In this study, we leverage a large longitudinal study on healthy aging in Spain, to identify the most important self-reported features for future conversion to MCI. Using machine learning (random forest) and permutation-based methods we select the set of most important self-reported variables for MCI conversion which includes among others, subjective cognitive decline, educational level, working experience, social life, and diet. Subjective cognitive decline stands as the most important feature for future conversion to MCI across different feature selection techniques.

Highlights

  • Alzheimer’s Disease is a complex, multifactorial, and comorbid condition

  • Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is an intermediary stage between the expected decline of normal aging and the pathological decline associated with dementia

  • The most common staging of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) includes a succession of three phases

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Summary

Introduction

Alzheimer’s Disease is a complex, multifactorial, and comorbid condition. The asymptomatic behavior in the early stages makes the identification of the disease onset challenging. Using machine learning (random forest) and permutation-based methods we select the set of most important self-reported variables for MCI conversion which includes among others, subjective cognitive decline, educational level, working experience, social life, and diet. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), the most common form of dementia, is a multifactorial neurodegenerative disorder whose neuropathological changes in the brain are estimated to occur several decades before the cognitive impairment is n­ oticeable[2]. This means that there is a long period of time in the development of the disease, from its very early onset characterized by subtle signs to the appearance of the typical symptoms of dementia. There is a concern with the early identification of cognitive decline, it is important as well to understand the stability over time of the MCI d­ iagnosis[14,15]

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