Tau‐PET is associated with knowledge of COVID‐19, COVID‐19‐related distress, and change in sleep quality during the pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background While the global COVID‐19 pandemic has hindered many human research operations, it has allowed for the investigation of novel scientific questions. Particularly, the effects of the pandemic and its resulting social isolation on elderly individuals and their association with Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers remains a broad and open question. Here, we sought to investigate whether knowledge of COVID‐19, pandemic‐related distress, and changes in sleep quality were associated with in vivo tau deposition in an AD‐enriched cohort. Methods COVID‐19 telephone assessments were conducted in N=292 individuals (29 young/174 CN/52 MCI/19 AD/18 other) of the TRIAD cohort in April‐July 2020. Assessment consisted of clinical and neuropsychiatric, instruments, including scales assessing the individual’s experience of the pandemic. Structural MRI and [18F]MK6240 tau‐PET were acquired before the pandemic. [18F]MK6240 standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR) were calculated 90‐110 minutes post‐injection using cerebellar grey matter as the reference region. Voxel‐based regression analyses were conducted to examine the associations between baseline [18F]MK6240 SUVR and knowledge of COVID‐19, distress related to COVID‐19, and change in sleep quality since the pandemic. Results Higher tau‐PET SUVR was associated with less knowledge of COVID‐19 in N=210 individuals in the cuneus, cingulate and superior temporal regions. Tau‐PET was similarly associated with lower levels of COVID‐19‐related distress in the isthmus and rostral anterior cingulate (N=201 individuals). Furthermore, tau‐PET tracer uptake was significantly associated with increases in sleep quality as assessed by rate of change in Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index before and during the pandemic (N=176 individuals). All results survived correction for multiple comparisons using random field theory with a cluster threshold of p < 0.001. Conclusion Our results suggest that those with increased tau deposition may have a weaker understanding of symptoms and prevention of COVID‐19 and lower levels of distress related to the pandemic than individuals with less brain tau. Individuals with higher tau may also experience improved sleep quality during the pandemic. While these observations appear to be favourable effects of tau, the first may suggest that public health information about COVID‐19 is less accessible to the aging population. The interactions and mediation of these effects remain to be properly elucidated.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".