Prefrontal Planning Latency Associated With Age and Serological Evidence of Microbial Exposure

It has been hypothesized that certain cognitive disorders characterized by frontal executive dysfunction, such as Alzheimer's disease (a neurodegenerative conformational proteinopathy involving amyloid-β and tau), may be associated with prior exposure to infectious agents. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that serological markers of microbial exposure are associated with frontal lobe activity in humans.

Executive planning latency was measured in 53 adult participants in this cross-sectional study. A venous blood sample was collected from each participant. Assays for the serological markers of bacterial and viral exposure were performed in a blinded manner.

Generalized linear modeling (likelihood ratio χ ² = 27.76, df = 5, p = 0.0001) included five statistically significant independent variables. Among these, age (|t| = 4.360, p = 0.0001), Borrelia burgdorferi lymphocyte function-associated antigen-1 (| t | = 3.260, p = 0.002), and Ehrlichia chaffeensis and Anaplasma phagocytophilum assays (| t | = 3.138, p = 0.003) were highly significant.

This study supports the hypothesis that frontal lobe executive function, as indexed by prefrontal cortical planning latency, is associated with serological evidence of exposure to several bacterial genera, particularly Borrelia and Ehrlichia/Anaplasma, as well as with age.