Cognitive Impairment and Its Associated Factors in Older Adults Living in High and Low Altitude Areas: A Comparative Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Cognitive impairment is a major health concern in older adults. Few studies have examined the association between environmental factors and cognitive impairment, especially in high altitude areas. In this study, the prevalence of cognitive impairment in older adults living in high altitude was compared with those living in low altitude areas. Methods This was a comparative study conducted at Qinghai (high altitude group), and Guangzhou (low altitude group), China. Cognition, depressive symptoms and quality of life (QOL) were assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and WHO Quality of Life brief version–WHOQOL-BREF, respectively. Results Altogether, 644 older adults (207 in Qinghai and 437 in Guangzhou) completed the assessment. The prevalence rate of cognitive impairment was 94.7% (95% CI: 91.6–97.7%) in older adults living in the high altitude area, while the corresponding figure was 89.2% (95% CI: 86.3–92.1%) in the low altitude area. After controlling for covariates, the high altitude group appeared more likely to have cognitive impairment (OR = 2.92, 95% CI: 1.23–6.91, P = 0.015) compared with the low altitude group. Within the high altitude group sample, multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that older age (aged 74 and above) was significantly associated with higher risk of severe cognitive impairment (OR = 3.58, 95%CI: 1.44–8.93, P = 0.006), while higher education level (secondary school and above) was associated with decreased risk of moderate cognitive impairment (OR = 0.43, 95%CI: 0.22–0.85, P = 0.006). Within the high altitude group, QOL did not differ significantly between normal/mild, moderate and severe cognitive impairment subgroups across physical [ F (1, 207) = 1.83, P = 0.163], psychological [ F (1, 207) = 1.50, P = 0.225], social [ F (1,207) = 2.22, P = 0.111] and environmental domains [ F (1,207) = 0.49, P = 0.614]. Conclusion This study found that cognitive impairment was more common among older adults living in the high altitude area. Regular screening and appropriate interventions should be provided to older adults in need.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".