Dietary BCAAs (Branched Chain Amino Acids) and Cognitive Function: Implications for Nutritional Interventions in Elderly Populations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The aging process is often accompanied by a decline in cognitive function, impacting memory, attention, and decision-making. Malnutrition, including protein deficiency, is recognized as a contributing factor to cognitive decline in elderly populations. Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), essential amino acids obtained solely from dietary sources, play a pivotal role in various physiological processes, including neurotransmitter synthesis and protein synthesis in the brain. This study aims to investigate the relationship between serum BCAA levels and cognitive function in elderly individuals. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 25 elderly subjects (age > 60 years) in Padang, Indonesia. Serum BCAA levels were measured using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), and cognitive function was assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment - Indonesian version (MoCA-Ina). Statistical analysis was performed to determine the correlation between BCAA levels and MoCA-Ina scores. Results: The mean serum levels of total BCAAs, leucine, isoleucine, and valine in the elderly subjects were 0.40 ± 0.15 mM, 0.09 ± 0.06 mM, 0.05 ± 0.02 mM, and 0.26 ± 0.10 mM, respectively. The median MoCA-Ina score was 23 (range: 8-27), indicating a significant proportion of participants with cognitive impairment. Statistical analysis revealed no significant correlation between total BCAA levels and MoCA-Ina scores (r = 0.071, p = 0.735). However, a moderate positive correlation was observed between isoleucine levels and MoCA-Ina scores (r = 0.344, p = 0.092), although not statistically significant. Conclusion: This study suggests that serum BCAA levels, particularly isoleucine, may have implications for cognitive function in elderly populations. Further research with a larger sample size and longitudinal design is warranted to elucidate the complex relationship between dietary BCAAs, serum BCAA levels, and cognitive health in aging individuals.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".