Machine learning-based early screening of mild cognitive impairment using nutrition-related biomarkers and functional indicators
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), an early stage of cognitive decline preceding dementia, poses a growing public health concern, especially in aging populations. Early identification of individuals at risk is essential for implementing timely interventions to delay or prevent progression to dementia. Nutritional factors and related biomarkers have emerged as promising targets for developing convenient, scalable screening strategies, particularly in resource-limited rural settings. This study aimed to develop and validate a machine learning (ML) model that integrates diet-related metabolites, physical examination indicators, lifestyle behaviors, and sleep quality to predict MCI risk and to evaluate the biological and predictive relevance of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) and its dietary precursors among older adults in rural China. Methods: Data were derived from a large-scale epidemiological survey in Fuxin County, Liaoning Province, including 907 participants, of whom 270 were classified as MCI based on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment-Basic. Seven ML models were trained and evaluated using accuracy, sensitivity, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The best model's predictors were interpreted using Shapley Additive Explanation (SHAP) values. Results: The random forest model showed the bestperformance (AUC = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.677-0.801; sensitivity = 0.72). SHAP analysis identified age, choline, carnitine, betaine, TMAO, daily intake of fruit and vegetables, body mass index, hip circumference, and daytime dysfunction as key predictors. Conclusion: TMAO-related metabolites consistently contributed positive SHAP effects, suggesting biologically relevant links between dietary metabolism and early cognitive decline. This interpretable ML framework offers a feasible, sensitive, and biologically informed approach for early MCI screening and supports the integration of nutritional biomarkers into cognitive health surveillance.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".