The impact of modifiable lifestyle factors and existence of comorbidities on
MCI to dementia conversion and dementia progression 
   Lead Investigator:    Seng Oon Toh
   Institution      :    Linus Health Inc.
   E-Mail           :    stoh@linus.health
   Proposal ID      :    1648



   Proposal Description:
   Our research topic is to investigate how modifiable lifestyle factors and the existence of comorbidities contribute to an individual's risk to manifest cognitive problems in the presence of AD pathology, progress from MCI to dementia, and show faster progression of dementia and resulting cognitive disability. We will look to extract variables from UDS that identify lifestyle factors such as BMI, sleep, stress and anxiety, habits, medications and co-morbidities such as hypertension, fragility, and cardiac issues. This will be correlated against dementia diagnosis and neuro-psychology exam scores such as MMSE and MoCA. Pathology will be inferred by means of volumetric measurements of brain as well as biomarkers such as CSF. We believe that there will be strong evidence of these correlations such that a simple statistical analysis should confirm these links. More advanced multi-variate classifiers such as random forest will be used if necessary. The longitudinal nature of UDS in the NACC database helps us identify the pace of disease progression.