Midlife and old-age cardiovascular risk factors, educational attainment, and cognition at 90-years – population-based study with 48-years of follow-up

We examined the associations of midlife and old-age cardiovascular risk factors, education, and midlife dementia risk scores with cognition at 90+ years, using data from a population-based study with 48 years of follow-up. Participants were 96 individuals aged 90-97 from the older Finnish Twin Cohort study. Cardiovascular risk factors assessed via questionnaires in 1975, 1981, 1990, and 2021-2023 included blood pressure, body mass index, physical activity, and cholesterol, and self-reported educational attainment. The Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Aging, and Dementia (CAIDE) score and an educational-occupational attainment score were used as midlife dementia risk scores. Cognitive assessments included semantic fluency, and immediate and delayed recall from a 10-word list learning task. Regression analyses were conducted with dementia risk factors predicting cognition at 90+ years, adjusting for age, sex, education, follow-up time, and apolipoprotein E genotype (ε4-carrier vs non-carriers). Results showed that higher education and higher educational occupational score were associated with better cognitive performance in all cognitive measures. Those with high midlife blood pressure scored significantly higher in all cognitive tests than those with normal blood pressure. Conversely, those with high old-age blood pressure scored lower in semantic fluency but not in immediate or delayed recall. Other cardiovascular risk factors and the CAIDE score did not show consistent associations with cognition. Education appears to have a long-lasting protective effect in aging, whereas midlife and old-age cardiovascular risk factors showed no consistent associations with cognition in this older population.