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Updated: Feb 13, 2026

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing
Published on: January 24, 2020
Age-accelerated cognitive decline in asymptomatic adults with CSF β-amyloid
Lindsay R Clark1, Sara E Berman2, Derek Norton2
1From the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (L.R.C., S.A., S.C.J., C.M.C.), William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital, Madison; Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (L.R.C., S.E.B., D.N., B.B.B., S.A., S.C.J., C.M.C.), Wisconsin Alzheimer's Institute (L.R.C., R.L.K., E.J., B.B.B., S.C.J., C.M.C.), Medical Scientist and Neuroscience Training Programs (S.E.B.), and Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics (D.N.), University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health; Clinical Neurochemistry Laboratory (K.B., H.Z.), Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Mölndal; Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry (K.B., H.Z.), Institute of Neuroscience & Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Mölndal, Sweden; and Department of Molecular Neuroscience (H.Z.), University College London, Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, UK. lrclark@medicine.wisc.edu.
Objective:
Compare cognitive and hippocampal volume trajectories in asymptomatic middle-aged and older adults with positive CSF markers of β-amyloid (Aβ) or tau to adults without an Alzheimer disease (AD)-associated biomarker profile.
Methods:
Three hundred ninety-two adults enrolled in a longitudinal cohort study (Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention or Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center) completed a lumbar puncture and at least 2 biennial or annual neuropsychological evaluations. Cutoffs for Aβ42, total tau, and phosphorylated tau were developed via receiver operating characteristic curve analyses on a sample of 78 participants (38 dementia, 40 controls). These cutoffs were applied to a separate sample of 314 cognitively healthy adults (mean age at CSF collection = 61.5 years), and mixed-effects regression analyses tested linear and quadratic interactions of biomarker group × age at each visit on cognitive and hippocampal volume outcomes.
Results:
Two hundred fifteen participants (69%) were biomarker negative (preclinical AD stage 0), 46 (15%) were Aβ+ only (preclinical AD stage 1), 25 (8%) were Aβ+ and tau+ (preclinical AD stage 2), and 28 (9%) were tau+ only. Both stage 1 and stage 2 groups exhibited greater rates of linear decline on story memory and processing speed measures, and nonlinear decline on list-learning and set-shifting measures compared to stage 0. The tau+ only group did not significantly differ from stage 0 in rates of cognitive decline.
Conclusion:
In an asymptomatic at-risk cohort, elevated CSF Aβ (with or without elevated tau) was associated with greater rates of cognitive decline, with the specific pattern of decline varying across cognitive measures.
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