Association of personality with amyloid and tau: results from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging and meta-analysis.

Publication date: September 2, 2021 DOI: https : //doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.08.021

Explanation

Higher neuroticism tendency and lower integrity in a person's personality are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease dementia, but the neuropathological correlates are unknown.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between personality traits and the neuropathology of amyloid and tau in a new sample and meta-analysis.

Participants in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) completed the revised NEO Personality Inventory and underwent amyloid (11 C-labeled Pittsburgh Compound B) and tau (18 F-flortaucipir) positron emission tomography.

Results showed that among normal BLSA participants, higher neuroticism tendencies and lower integrity were associated with cortical amyloid load.

This association remained significant after controlling for age, gender, education, depressive symptoms, hippocampal volume, and APOE ε4, according to the study.

A similar association was also found for tau in the olfactory entorhinal cortex.

A variational effects meta-analysis of 12 studies found that higher neuroticism tendency (N = 3015, r = .07, P = .008) and lower integrity (N = 2990, r = -.11, P <.001) were associated with more amyloid deposition.

This association was moderated by cognitive status, with a stronger effect for cognitively normal compared to heterogeneous samples, suggesting that the association between personality and proteopathy is not a phenomenon that manifests itself in neuropsychiatric clinical symptoms.